


a mask of my own face (i'd wear that)

by ringfinger



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Canon Compliant, Hand Jobs, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Tanker Incident (Metal Gear), Recreational Drug Use, Semi-Public Sex, That Fucking Parrot, Under-negotiated Kink, and have sex with your best friend under the guise of anonymity, dave and hal are Extremely Normal, mention of past sexual abuse, semi-mission fic, to cope with the potential emotional fallout, when you have problems with your own sexuality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-14 21:07:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28927029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ringfinger/pseuds/ringfinger
Summary: “I think our rendezvous point is a gay bar,” Hal observed, voice low.There was considered silence, then rustling as Dave — no, Pliskin, he remembered they weren’t supposed to know each other — produced a matchbook and a cigarette, taking his time in lighting it. “That a problem?”Post-Tanker Incident. Snake and Otacon deal with repression, impulsiveness, and the consequences of trying to have your cake and eat it too.
Relationships: Otacon/Solid Snake
Comments: 26
Kudos: 71





	1. and none of them would know that i was secretly myself

It was about midnight by the time Hal had driven around the city in enough meandering circles that his palms stopped sweating quite so much, stashing the car and shouldering his backpack jammed full of a laptop and all of its related charge cords, USBs, and flash drives. His keyring jangled as he idly played with a toy on it, some meaningless little tchotchke bought in an anime tape store, but his steps were quick and soft on the wet pavement.

Solid Snake had been dead for almost two years now, and all official ties to Philanthropy led nowhere — Hal had made sure of that. He was pretty sure no one actually knew his own name, his own face; even when Philanthropy was at the height of activity most major media outlets assumed that it was Snake as a lone actor, backed by a veritable legion of hackers. Still, it wouldn’t do to be recognized; he knew his own identity was a loose thread and if tugged by the right NSA agent he feared what about him, his family, his father could come tumbling down. _Two generations of black ops engineering, guess the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree._

He pulled his hoodie around him tighter, kept his eyes glued to the ground in case of security cameras. The asphalt shone a dirty orange under street lamps, the same color as the end of Dave’s cigarette. 

Dave. He had a meeting, and if his Casio was telling the truth he was pushing it. Hal picked up the pace, wincing when a misstep into a puddle left rainwater soaking into his sock. He turned a corner. Looked over his shoulder. Turned another corner. 

The last two years had been...difficult. After the accident they’d agreed it would have implicated Hal if Snake had been caught after being considered legally dead, so they’d split up, staying in motels and apartments through shady deals with landlords, sporadically meeting up now and then to compare notes and sources for the Big Shell operation. It had been hard to get used to loneliness again after living practically on top of each other for so long, and Hal had started to miss the company, shooting the shit on Dave’s back porch when he couldn’t sleep and found him having a smoke in the frigid Alaskan night. So he found himself looking forward to their eventual get-togethers, even if they were technically for business. 

Their agreed-upon meetup was a shitty little dive bar in Hell’s Kitchen, ironically named Jupiter’s. Hal would’ve liked to think it was a clever reference but knowing Dave he wouldn’t remember something so facile. He avoided eye contact with the bartender as the door swung open, not bothering to wipe off his sneakers on the mat and tracking wet Adidas zig-zag patterns across the sparsely decorated tiling, and deposited himself into a booth facing the door. Dave was nowhere to be seen, and for one nervous moment Hal thought he’d been stood up, but that would’ve been absurd. Dave always made good on promises, even if he kept Hal waiting now and then.

The bar was somewhat occupied but it was a Tuesday night; Hal scanned the patronage and noted that the men outnumbered women about three to one but this wasn’t a shitty sports bar environment and it was mostly guys who looked like they worked out nursing drinks and chatting. One guy, sporting a muscle tee that showed off the ripple of his shoulder blades when he stretched, put his hand on another man’s arm. Hal raised an eyebrow and subconsciously pulled at his own t-shirt that he knew, despite being tucked in, hung off him. He was so busy assessing the other patrons for reasons he couldn’t quite explain that he almost missed when the door swung open.

It was Dave. It had to be. Sure, he wasn’t done up in his sneaking suit, but Hal knew him from anywhere. He’d started growing his hair out since Shadow Moses and it fell down to the collar of the flannel shirt he was wearing, the soft jingle of the rings on his motorcycle boots Hal knew he favored so much in his civvies provoking a subconscious response at this point. They were both dressed for their environment but between Dave and the other guys at the bar Hal felt distinctly unfashionable and out of place. He slid down further in his booth; it wasn’t like Dave hadn’t seen him first thing upon entering anyway.

Dave seated himself behind Hal, so they both leaned on each side of the wooden backing dividing the two booths. Wouldn’t do to see them directly interacting, so this was usually the way things went. It was a far cry from Alaska, watching the lit end of Dave’s cigarette turn the stubble on his cheek a glowing white.

“I think our rendezvous point is a gay bar,” Hal observed, voice low.

There was considered silence, then rustling as Dave — no, Pliskin, he remembered they weren’t supposed to know each other — produced a matchbook and a cigarette, taking his time in lighting it. “That a problem?”

“Well, no,” he replied, suddenly feeling very stupid. “It still gets the job done, I guess.”

A grunt. “Okay. So what’ve you got to share.”

“So the President hasn’t had any public appearances for about a week, right? And they said it was because he was going in for some non specified surgery?”

“Yeah, and?”

“It’s bullshit. He’s being held inside the Big Shell and he’s been missing since that routine inspection. Negotiations have been going for days but the terrorists aren’t budging.”

He wished he could see the look on Pliskin’s face, the heave of his chest when he blew a cloud of cigarette smoke. Hal could smell the tobacco and soap on Pliskin’s clothes even from where he sat facing away from him. “Well, that throws a wrench in things. So it’s now or never, huh?”

The two of them had been planning longer than usual for this infiltration, concerned about a second RAY incident. Hal could work miracles but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to pull the same rabbit out of a hat twice. 

“I’m sorry, D—“ Hal bit his tongue hard, cursing himself. “Pliskin. I know it’s not ideal.”

“It’s not.” Pliskin’s reply was short, clipped. Hal wished he’d say more. He wished he’d talk to him like he actually fucking knew him. “Anything else?”

Hal didn’t say anything. It wasn’t like him to get crabby but in all honesty the atmosphere in this place was seeping into him in a way he was pretty sure he didn’t like, and smelling the smoke of Dave-Pliskin’s cigarette, hear the soft jingle of his boot tapping the floor without actually being able to see him was driving him batshit. Pliskin had a beer at his table that seemed almost conjured out of thin air, that he absolutely was not going to finish but would probably pay for with a wad of cash on the table and not a word to the employees before leaving. Hal heard him set it on the laminated wood topping with a dull _thunk,_ as if to punctuate the conversation. 

“I gotta piss,” Pliskin said, and headed for the men’s room without much further ado. Some crazed part of him feared Pliskin would jump out the bathroom window and disappear into the night and after fidgeting for about a minute Hal stood up and followed him, marching to the bathroom and slamming the door open angrily, half expecting to find the place empty. 

Instead there was Pliskin, rinsing the soap off his hands in the sink. He regarded Hal, who stood in the doorway of the bathroom with his feet staggered wide and his hands balled into fists like he was imitating a black hat in a spaghetti Western, with some confusion. 

“Um.” He turned the faucet off, flicking little droplets of water off his hands into the basin. His flannel sleeves were rolled up and distantly Hal noted the dark thicket of hair covering Pliskin’s forearms. “Need something?”

Yeah, that was kind of the problem. “I—“ Christ, he looked really dumb here, didn’t he? “Honestly didn’t plan this far,” Hal admitted. Then, pointing an accusatory finger:

“Did you know we’d be meeting at a gay bar?”

Pliskin stared at him, probably baffled at Hal bringing this up again. 

“A bar’s a bar. What’s it to you?”

“It’s not—“ Hal could feel himself getting flustered, turning pink. “Either of us could have been _seen._ Assumptions made. I don’t—“

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Hal, you’ve been hacking government agencies for the past five years and you’re afraid of looking—“ Pliskin-Dave-Pliskin again’s eyes turned big, tripping on his mistake, and Hal felt a swell of triumph in his chest, that cracking of character for _him._ He didn’t know when this rendezvous became less about comparing notes and more about confronting Pliskin. Two years and not much of a real conversation between them. “Fucking — let’s not talk about this here. Two guys go into a gay bar, in _New York City._ That’s hardly fucking front-page news, no one’ll be paying attention. Now drop it.” 

Pliskin dried his hands with a paper towel and shook his hair out of his face. Hal followed his movements raptly, swallowing hard. He made a movement for the door but Hal didn’t budge, only stopping in his tracks when Pliskin finally realized he was about to fucking bowl him over if he kept walking. So there they stood, chest to chest in the bathroom, Pliskin wearing an increasingly ticked-off expression. He was quite a few inches shorter than Hal but his presence more than compensated; standing in a room with him always felt like being swallowed up. 

There were suddenly hands in the collar of his shirt and Hal realized belatedly that he was being yanked forward. 

“What is the _fucking_ issue, man,” Pliskin’s breath was hot on his face, his glasses fogging with it. This was pinging a sense memory, Shadow Moses, Snake’s hands on his shoulders as he looked him over. The flock of crazed butterflies absolutely pummeling the inside of his stomach. Hal had been glad for the darkness because his face was red as a fucking stop sign for a half hour afterward. He wasn’t sure he was getting quite so lucky in this bathroom,in the low but warm light. Could Pliskin see? Did Hal _want_ Pliskin to see? “Stop acting _weird.”_

Pliskin let go of his collar and shoved past him, muttering haughtily to himself and not bothering to see if Hal was following behind when he let the door swing shut behind him. Hal was left to stand, alone, in the men’s bathroom. Distantly he realized his palms had started sweating all over again. 

—

He didn’t know how to stop acting weird, because Hal didn’t know what _was_ weird. Was it weird to be constantly second-guessing yourself, constantly questioning what you do in the case some stranger across the room thinks the wrong thing about you? Sure, he liked manga and anime and computers and action figures and got bullied tremendously for it in school but when a kid spat _fag_ at him after kicking him in the head he wasn’t entirely convinced it had anything to do with liking Gundam figures or watching _Revolutionary Girl Utena._ There was something about the way Hal just _was,_ the way he comported himself around others, that made them recoil from him. 

He got bullied for being a geek or an egghead or a nerd in the fifth grade but by the tenth those minor insults had been replaced with terms that were so much more nebulous, so derogatory, and cut to his very core. 

The worst part was not knowing if it was _true._ He was interested in girls conceptually but the couple of times a girl had actually taken enough pity on him to let him touch her he’d go cold after only a couple of minutes. He didn’t know what part of this was _him_ or the masses of scar tissue under his skin, in his brain, that thought of _her_ every time and would compel him to turn away, shuddering, as if he had just touched a live rattlesnake. 

Hal sighed. He turned over in the threadbare hotel sheets and thought of Pliskin’s hair brushing the back of his shirt collar, and what it would feel like to curl the strands around his fingers and pull. He thought of a man he didn’t know’s hands, because it shouldn’t be the one he does. And, well, whatever happened next was between him and the tacky-painted inn room ceiling. 

—

This was going badly. 

The plans Otacon had laid out went sideways so instantaneously that if Snake was a religious man he might have thought a higher power existed and was intervening if only because He thought it would be funny to do so. The President was nowhere to be seen; his supposed holding cell was instead filled with five terrorists playing a game of go fish that Snake had to neutralize quickly or else risk the entire mission going tits up. 

To top it all off, Otacon was in trouble. The control room he’d sequestered off for the purpose of surveilling had been unexpectedly breached; Otacon was left cowering under a table with his laptop, praying none of the soldiers pacing the room would think to check under the legs. 

“My location’s compromised,” Otacon crackled into Snake’s nanotransmitter, “come quick. The place is crawling with Dead Cell, I’m—“ a sudden silence, and for a moment Snake thought he’d been caught. He picked up the pace, pulling on his mask, shoulders low like a stalking animal. “I’m scared. Please.”

Otacon had come a long way since that first bust in Shadow Moses, and Snake trusted him well enough to look after himself without supervision. He certainly wasn’t pissing himself at the first sign of trouble anymore, so when he actually radioed for help it was bad news.

“Location? How many of them?”

“Strut F, very bottom floor, third room off the staircase. Seven of them,” Another pause. “They aren’t leaving.”

Shit. Okay. He would have to think fast. Snake ran as fast as his legs could humanly carry him, skidding into dark corners or jutting walls when he heard footsteps or voices. “I’m at Strut D. Sit tight.”

It wasn’t difficult, in theory, to traverse the Big Shell but the staircases made things tricky and fuck if the place wasn’t lousy with Dead Cell. He got to Strut F in five of the most anguished minutes of either his or Otacon’s lives and, always improvising, grabbed a fire extinguisher off a nearby wall and heaved it into the far end of the adjacent hallway where Otacon was set up, wincing as it landed with a dull metal _thunk_ and then engulfed the passage with the thick froth of extinguishing foam tripped by the impact. Blessedly, the door slammed open and sure enough seven Dead Cell agents rushed out, clamoring over each other to get their chance at detaining whichever Marine was dumb enough to try them this time (and slipping all over the hallway on foam in the chase).

Snake found Otacon crouched under the meeting desk inside, clutching his laptop to his chest and hyperventilating, tears crowding his eyes. He yelped at the sight of him and Snake covered his mouth with one palm, ripping his mask off with the other. 

“‘S okay, look at me, hey, _hey._ It’s me. I got you.”

He always had him. On the rare enough missions when Otacon needed to tag along Snake had promised to come if he radioed — provided he did so with good reason. Snake was used to no backup but Otacon was a civilian. He could stand on his own two feet but someone to lean on now and then wasn’t anything to be ashamed of. 

Snake stuck out his hand. Otacon took it, let himself be levered to his feet. “We gotta move you someplace less hot. Can you run?”

Otacon considered. He swallowed, putting on his best brave face. “Think so, but my legs are shaking like hell. Don’t let go of me.”

“Not a chance.”

Together they crept for what felt like hours toward Shell 2 in search of a more remote setup that wouldn’t have quite so many Dead Cells barging in every two seconds. Even though Otacon was no soldier and Snake could feel his pulse hammering even in his palm he moved at a good enough clip; Snake had half-expected to be dragging him along but every couple steps he’d look behind himself to see Otacon smiling at him timidly, giving his hand a reassuring squeeze. 

Strut H contained another warehouse and spare meeting rooms, and was positioned further away from Shell 1. They moved there next, in the hopes of no further surprises, but Snake wasn’t looking to spook Otacon any further by traversing the more sparsely guarded but dangerous and windy paths overhanging the Hudson, so they’d have to cut directly through the middle of the facility, through strut D and G first. Both were occupied by sediment pools and oil processors, which didn’t seem quite as interesting tactically as the executive and computer rooms, but Snake knew better than to assume that the two struts connecting both ends of the facility wouldn’t be heavily patrolled.

“God, I’m really not cut out for this,” Otacon muttered as Snake dragged him around another corner to avoid a passing patrol. “Strut H isn’t even a fifteen-minute walk and we’ve been at this for thirty.”

“Yeah, well. Welcome to tactical espionage,” Snake said, with a wan smile.

They made it through Strut D easily enough, running past patrols startled by one of Snake’s flashbangs or thrown office supplies acquired in one of what seemed like countless side rooms. Then came the connecting hallway, glass on one side divided by the occasional solid wall, terrorists pacing outside.

“We’re going to need to sidle. Stay against the wall, like this,” Snake pressed Otacon to the divider between windows with one solid palm to his sternum, quietly noting the sharp jut of ribs against where his hand rested through the thin material of his shirt. When he checked Otacon’s face for comprehension he saw that the other was suddenly flushed pink from his hairline to his collar. “Um. You okay?”

“Peachy,” Otacon said, though he sounded more like he was being strangled. Snake stared at him, mostly unconvinced. Was he getting sick? Tired? Snake hadn’t seen him go so red so fast before. “Just...keep talking.”

Snake dropped them to a squat and they traversed the rest of the hallway that way, pressed up against the wall and creeping along on the balls of their feet. Snake kept one hand over Otacon’s chest, mostly as reassurance, and felt his heartbeat hammering away in his ribcage.

—

“We’re nearly at the end of Strut G,” Snake said, and couldn’t help but sound audibly relieved. There were no more patrols in sight and he’d started to relax, allowing the two of them to more nakedly half-jog through the facility. Otacon looked to be at about the end of his rope, sweat slicking some of his hair to his forehead. Snake had no doubt that the smell of stress clung to the both of them fairly pungently right about now. Well, that was something Otacon could berate him about when they weren’t caught out half-exposed in a tanker.

They rounded another corner and — nearly collided with another patrol. The next few seconds were a blur to Snake; he had a hand in Otacon’s shirt and he was bodily hauling him into the nearest room because whatever was on the side of that door was far preferable to having to fist fight a bunch of terrorists one-handed.

“D—!!!” Otacon didn’t finish that thought because Snake tackled Otacon to the floor of the side room with all the frantic energy of a linebacker intercepting a couple yards from a touchdown, pushing all the air out of Otacon’s chest cavity like a rapidly deflating tire. It was only by a miracle that between the darkness and the crowding of supplies that neither of them caused a massive racket. Otacon’s laptop bounced once, twice, before skidding away into some dark corner of the utility room. 

Otacon opened his mouth in dismay over the computer but his exclamation was cut off by a wheeze and Snake didn’t know what to do but slap his palm over his mouth, hard. He held his weight down, pinning Otacon’s hips to the tile floor so he wouldn’t go scrabbling for his equipment and making any more noise than the two of them already had. Otacon coughed, once, against Snake’s palm and stilled, as if understanding, as if tapping out of his own tantrum.  
“If I take my hand off your mouth you have to promise not to scream.”

Otacon nodded, glasses glinting in the sliver of outside light spilling into the room. His eyes were wild. Snake obligingly retracted his hand, sitting back a little, and all Otacon could do was look at him, helpless. He looked so vulnerable here, underneath him, pinned like some rare butterfly. Curious, Snake nudged Otacon’s wrist with his other hand, found his pulse pounding.

“Sorry.” Snake paused, wet his lips, considered what else to say. Even in the dim light, it didn’t escape him that Otacon watched the movement of his tongue. Huh. “Sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah.” A pause. “Actually? No. Just...a sec. I feel. Bad.” Otacon clenched his fists, hissed through his teeth. His hips twitched.

_Oh._

Snake had no way of telling when this had officially started but Otacon was definitely half-hard and worsening by the second, something Snake could tell even though his fatigues and Otacon’s jeans. Probably it wasn’t being made any better caught up against Snake’s ass like this.

“Oh, Jesus.” Snake said, starting to stumble back — not out of disgust, but embarrassment on Otacon’s part. These things — well, they happened, and a body was a body. Just a simple physical reaction to pressure applied to a sensitive area and nothing more.

Right?

Otacon adjusted his (rapidly fogging) glasses but wore an expression like he’d just been caught doing something unspeakable, something so much worse than simply getting a half-chub after close-quarters contact. After god knows how long without sex. Snake knew neither of them were exactly drowning in it at any given time thanks to their occupations and living in such close quarters for as long as they had usually meant trading dirty magazines and whatever other horrid doujinshi Otacon had found scrounging some dumpy tape store that week. The two of them had dropped any sense of decorum around each other long ago and would inform the other plainly if the bathroom they were sharing for that week was about to be out of commission for the next half-hour or so for jerking off purposes. They had bonded pretty closely about shared kinks in porn as two ostensibly-straight red-blooded American men did. But this felt — different. Like Snake had found some kind of shoebox under Otacon’s bed, the scattered contents never intended for his eyes.

Something clicked into place.

Snake offered Otacon his hand, once again, allowing him the leverage to get to his feet. But this time he shifted his grip, his fingers crawling up Otacon’s thin wrist to rest over his pulse, still thumping hard under the pad of Snake’s thumb. He looked at Otacon; his expression was difficult to make out in the darkness, but he was breathing hard, standing close enough that his breath was ghosting across Snake’s face.

“—I gotta go,” Otacon said, abruptly, but Snake’s grip tightened, gentle but firm.

“Without your laptop and sporting a boner,” he observed, voice dry. “You sure about that?”

Otacon was silent, at a loss for words. 

“Are you—”

“I don’t _know,”_ Otacon interrupted, sounding cornered. He breathed in hard through his nose, exasperated, but he didn’t wrench his hand back. “Can you just — fuck, I can’t — can’t take this from you, if you won’t let me walk away with even some of my dignity intact then the least you can do is stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re _pitying_ me.”

Under the sleeves of his lab coat Otacon’s arms were dusted with hair. He had a mole on his left wrist that peeked out under Snake’s hand. If Snake turned a light on he was sure he’d see Otacon flushed pink all the way under his shirt, down to the center of his chest. Some crazed part of him wanted to lift the fabric and see for himself.

“I wouldn’t pity you,” Snake said, momentarily guileless, half-unbelieving what was coming out of his mouth. He took Otacon’s other wrist, slid his hand up his arm as if steadying a spooked horse. “Just. Let me help you.”

 _“Help_ me?!” Otacon echoed weakly, half-hysterical, as Snake steered him to an unused card table set up near the far wall, pinning him there with hands on his hips. God, he was so tall. Snake had to crane his neck to look at him, his glasses shining dimly.

“Yes. Or we could just sit here and wait for your dick to soften, it’s really your choice.”

Otacon stared at him, appalled. Snake slid to his knees, thumbing at one of the rivets in Otacon’s jeans.

“An answer would be really helpful right about now. Just so I know you’re okay with me putting your cock in my mouth.”

Otacon made a noise that sounded like the closest thing to an actual internal scream Snake had ever heard, but shook his head vigorously. He had one fist in his mouth, biting down gently on his knuckles, too overwhelmed and Snake hadn’t even gotten his fly open yet. “Have. Have you done this before?”

Snake considered for a moment, rubbing a palm over the line of Otacon’s dick through the denim. Otacon shuddered, bit his lip “A couple times, yeah.” He didn’t care to elaborate further. When you were on a battlefield and women were scarce this was just kind of what you eventually ended up doing. He remembered nights in Frank’s bunk, threads of spit connecting the tip of Frank’s cock to his lower lip. Frank liked it best when Snake teased with his hands, circled his hole with a spit-wet index finger. The memory made Snake shake, his own dick twitching. “You?”

“Nn. Not with a guy, no.” Snake hung on those words. _Not with a guy._ But with girls? Had he ever considered this? Is this something between them that could have been on the table? 

Snake hummed, undoing Otacon’s fly, shimmying down his jeans just enough to get at his boxers. Under his hands he felt the growing damp spot from his cock, caressed it and made him moan, then kissed him through the fabric open-mouthed. Otacon made a soft noise, as if stricken, hands clenching hard over the rim of the card table for purchase. His cock pulsed under the cheap cotton and Snake’s tongue and he laughed a little, the sound of it low and dark.

“You’re gonna kill me,” Otacon breathed, threading his fingers through Snake’s hair. “I’m going to die.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Snake winked, dragging his hands up Otacon’s belly, underneath his shirt, the fine hairs on Otacon’s stomach grazing the pads of his fingers. Otacon shivered at his touch; when Snake turned his face to suck at him hard, still through the fabric of his boxers, his fingers tightened in Snake’s hair. It felt good. Snake didn’t remember the last time someone tugged like that. He let himself moan, not too loud, let Otacon feel the vibration against his cock. 

“Oh, shit,” Otacon swore, “can you at least do me the dignity of not making me come in my pants?”

“You’re getting a free blowjob and you’re this pushy?” Snake was mocking offense but he already had his thumbs hooked in his boxers, pushing them down and freeing Otacon’s cock. He licked his lips at the sight, glistening wet with precum in the dark. “Aha, I knew it. Cut, like a good Jewish boy.”

Otacon’s mouth twisted but seeing him get tetchy with his dick in Snake’s face didn’t do much to add any real degree of menace. “Don’t be such a _goy.”_

“Not judging,” Snake insisted, but he still couldn’t seem to wipe his smile off. “Really. Dick’s a dick,” and with that he buried his face in the join of Otacon’s hip and pelvis, worrying the skin there with his teeth and tongue, pointedly ignoring his cock in favor of pressing kisses to the delicate flesh, sliding one hand down to cup at his balls and move them away, sucking at the sensitive skin behind. Otacon did a sharp, full-body shudder at that, hissed out through his teeth.

 _“Plis-s-s-kin.”_ His tongue was ragged on the consonant. Snake stilled at the use of the name, bewildered. He knew that was the title Otacon was supposed to be using for him right now but he thought — that he hated it? Otacon avoided using it as often as possible, except — for whatever little thing they had going right now.

As if Snake was a stranger. Oh, holy fuck. Okay, maybe the concept got him more than a little horny himself.

“So _that’s_ the game, huh,” Snake said, voice rough. “Is this the kinda shit you think about? Getting fucked by a guy you don’t know?”

“Nngh,” Otacon replied, hips twitching abortively. Snake finally took pity on him, licking up the side of the shaft, tasting, testing him. It was pretty clear a guy had never sucked him off but from the way he was acting Snake wasn’t sure a woman had gotten anywhere close either. Snake enveloped the head in the heat of his mouth, relished the salty, bitter taste. Otacon’s cock was blood-hot and so fucking needy, his desperation making saliva pool under Snake’s tongue. He couldn’t remember the last time he was this excited to swallow a guy down. Otacon was looking at him like he was the fucking Mozart of dick sucking.

Well, then he’d give Otacon a fucking show.

Snake smirked at him and then swallowed, really _swallowed_ down, struggling with his gag reflex till Otacon bumped the back of his throat and his reflex won out, gagging against the intrusion and tearing a wrecked noise out of Otacon’s chest. Snake exhaled hard out of his nose, pulling off slowly till the spit-slicked crown of his cock popped from his lips and Otacon muttered “Je- _sus.”_

He wondered how he looked, right about now. With the lights off like this could Otacon see the stretch of his lips, the red, abused shade of them? That was Snake’s favorite part; the way a guy’s lips wrapped around his cock, how swollen they were afterward. He found himself thinking about doing this again, if Otacon would let him. If they could make some sort of arrangement. 

Snake dragged the flat of his tongue along the underside of his cock, tracing the vein, swirling over the sensitive underside of the crown knowing just how weak in the knees it’d make him. And he was right. Otacon’s fingers were weaving through his hair, desperately seeking purchase as he swayed unsteadily, then dropped to his jaw, his lips, pressing a thumb into Snake’s mouth and onto his tongue, letting drool gather once more.

“God, look at you,” Otacon whispered, voice catching when Snake swallowed down on his cock again, thumb still in his mouth. When he pulled off his tongue was sticky with precum and drool, starting to dribble down his chin. “Shit. You don’t know — that time in the bathroom, when I cut you off, I—” 

Fuck, how badly Snake wanted to get in his space then, crowd him against the door, kiss him breathless. He didn’t know then, couldn’t put words to it. Didn’t know if Otacon would’ve wanted that too. “Tell me what you wanted,” Snake said, voice slurred. 

“I never — thought about it with a stranger,” Otacon said, very carefully, his voice shaking. “But when I saw you, I…” He swallowed hard, squeezing his eyes shut, as if he couldn’t put what he wanted to words, like he was too embarrassed. Snake took a little bit of pity on him; this was the guy that would muse about whether getting your prostate stimulated was actually worth a try any time he put down some insane comic about a guy getting rubbed up by a tentacle monster but it was another thing to apply that to really, actually getting your dick sucked in a maintenance closet.

“Y’know, I used to think eggheads like you were these sexless, buttoned-up frigid types,” Snake cut in, laying it on thick. He was playing a character now, the guy in the gay bar bathroom, dragging the blunt edges of his nails down Otacon’s bare thighs and leaving trails of gooseflesh in his wake. “You’re all so neurotic, so detail-oriented, all about the video games and the VHS tapes and comics in your spare time, where’s the room for guys like me?” Otacon’s breath hitched; bingo. “But that’s it, isn’t it. You want and want and want, but you don’t know how to _take.”_

Otacon let out a sound that seemed like an agreement, his thumb drawing shaky patterns through the stubble on Snake’s cheek. He turned his face then, keeping his thumb and forefinger wrapped around the base of Otacon’s cock, flicking out his tongue to lick at the pad of his finger. He jerked him off slow, teasingly, and the way Otacon shook under him reminded Snake of a parked car accelerating, gaining momentum but with nowhere to go.

“I wanted to push you against the sink,” Otacon said, finally, and Snake looked up to regard him, still with his mouth around Otacon’s thumb, licking a stripe down to the webbing between his thumb and pointer. “Guys like you are always so damn smug, like you know everyone wants you, walking in like you own the place, I just wanna —”

Snake stilled, pulling away, off of Otacon’s thumb and leaving a string of spit connecting them. Otacon’s face turned hard and frustrated, bucking up against Snake’s unmoving hand. “What,” Snake asks, voice low and ragged. “What did you wanna do?”

“To f—fuck you. Push your shirt up under your arms and touch you. P-pull your hair,” Otacon gasped, head knocking back against the wall as Snake took him into his mouth again and wrapped his hands around the backs of his thighs, urging him further, kneading his ass. He didn’t know Otacon had such an odd little mean streak but he wasn’t complaining at all; his cock was filled out in his fatigues, excited at the idea of getting pushed around. It wasn’t often anyone really tried that with him. “Grind on your ass till I come and jerk you off. Or maybe not — leave you in the bathroom exposed.”

Snake pulled off laughing, surprised. “Dirty little nerd.”

“You asked!” If Snake could see him better he was sure he’d be red in the face. Otacon was running so hot that even in the dim light Snake could tell his glasses were fogging with condensation. “Are you gonna sit here and laugh at me or are you gonna — you know—”

“Oh, well since you asked so nicely.” He was just about done with the foreplay anyway; Otacon wasn’t going to last much longer by the looks of it and now wasn’t exactly the time for too much torturing. Snake smacked him on the ass, once, earning a choked-off yelp, and swallowed him down to the base, let Otacon feel him gag again but forcing past it, breathed hard through his nose as he felt Otacon start to seize against him, the hand on his jaw skittering frenzied up behind his ear, to the shaggy hair at the nape of his neck and _yanking._

“Oh god oh fuck Dave I’m gonna—”

He pulled off at that last moment just as Otacon fell apart with a wretched sound, spattering Snake’s face. Maybe not the best idea to do in the dark but he’d been seized in a fit of inspiration, and it’s not like anyone was going to see if there was dried cum in his hair. There was a string of it dripping off his brow onto his cheek. Classy.

Otacon, for the most part, was mortified, one hand over his mouth as if he’d just been caught defacing private property. Snake’s name hung in the air between them like smoke in the aftermath of an explosion. “Did I just—? Your face, oh shit, shit, I’m so sorry—”

“‘S fine,” Snake said, lurching to his feet, more dizzied by his own name than anything else. “Sorry, I. Should have warned you. That I wanted that to happen.”

Otacon stared at him, taking in the gleam of cum drying on his face. He shuddered when Snake wiped some off his cheek with the pad of his thumb, then sucked on it. Otacon took the sleeve of his jacket and wiped at some of the worst of it, his own cum dripping off Snake’s brow. Marked. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Um. Okay. Did you…?” Otacon fumbled, hand seeking out the join of Snake’s legs, the swell of his neglected cock still wedged up against his thigh. Now it was his turn to groan, smacking his forehead into the meat of Otacon’s shoulder. “Ah. Guess not. Can I—?”

Snake nodded against his shoulder, pressing his elbows up against the storage room wall for stability, bracketing Otacon’s head. He didn’t realize how bad he had it till now, with Otacon’s thin fingers tracing him through his fatigues. Otacon found the zipper soon enough and suddenly he was exposed, underwear yanked down to his mid-thighs.

“If you’re gonna do it do it now, man,” Snake said. He felt pathetically horny, standing here with his dick hard enough to hammer nails and Otacon just _looking_ at it as if he’d never seen someone else’s cock before. Well, maybe that was the truth, but fucking still.

“Gah. I — okay,” Otacon wrapped a hand around him, gave an experimental tug, muttering to himself — “Never tried this with foreskin, what the hell,” even though Snake knew well enough it was probably already drawn back from how painfully fucking hard he was. Otacon got a dribble of precum into the crease of his palm, and Snake made an impatient noise, grinding his teeth. 

“It’s not rocket science, Otacon, just — fuck, unh, yeah. Shit. Just like that.” He may have been an insufferable prick about it but he had it just about as right as any fucking guy who jerked off for most of his adult life would. Snake had forgotten how good that felt, the alien sensation of someone else’s hand on his cock, making his knees shake. Otacon pumped him hard and fast, twisting his wrist on each upstroke and Snake found himself overwhelmed with the thought _that this is how he gets off_ because he hadn’t touched another guy like this before, he’d said so himself. It made the need coil up tighter in the base of his spine, wire-tense and damn near painful. Snake bit his lip, curling his fingers into fists, nails biting crescents into his palms.

He didn’t really have words, far too gone at that point that all he could do was pant into the crook of Otacon’s neck as he let himself get worked over. Otacon’s hands, normally so cool, felt red-hot on his skin; the other had settled on the back of his neck, fingers threaded through the fringe covering his nape, oddly intimate for a quick fuck in a storage closet. He wasn’t saying much of anything either, too focused on the glide of his fist over Snake’s dick, teeth gritted and muttering _cmoncmoncmon,_ harsh and focused, making heat stutter down his vertebrae.

 _“Hal,”_ David rasped, teeth against his neck, too fucked-out for any more of a coherent warning, hands scrabbling around the wall for purchase before admitting defeat and digging into the sharp line of Hal’s shoulders. His hips juddered against Hal, pushed up, up up till he was practically crushing his body into him.

“C’mon, do it then,” Hal said through clenched teeth, his stubble scraping David’s jaw, and then he was just _gone,_ fingers tightening into the soft meat of Hal’s bicep, coming with a sharp hiss into Hal’s fist, over the webbing of his thumb and forefinger, a speck landing on Hal’s glasses as David lurched harder into him, rutting through it, Hal’s fist sticky against his own shirt.

 _“Shit,”_ David kneaded Hal’s shoulder, half-collapsed into him, and for a moment they just stood, panting, breathing each other’s air. David felt the droplets of sweat collecting between their bodies, sliding down his ribs beneath his undershirt. Hal’s hair was stuck to his forehead. “Okay. Okay. God damn.”

Absurdly, Hal’s soft cock was still hanging half-out of his boxers. David stared at it, moved to tuck it back in till Hal smacked his hands away. He had a strange, guarded look on his face, like he’d just finished doing something wrong and was all of a sudden looking to repent.

“I can take care of myself.”

“What’s with the attitude?”

Otacon’s eyes flicked over to Snake. They were blank and hard, like he hadn’t just had his hand in his hair moments before. He looked half-insane with the fleck of cum on the lens of his glasses, but that wasn’t stopping him from acting like nothing had even happened. He tucked himself back in, fastening his jeans with a single curt zip. Otacon removed his glasses and wiped them on the hem of his (now cum-stained) shirt, replacing them when he was satisfied they were appropriately clean. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“So are we not going to—”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” he cut in, adjusting his glasses with one long finger tapped against the bridge. Snake couldn’t see his eyes but noted the uncomfortable line of Otacon’s mouth; dumbly, he followed suit, shimmying his underwear back up and zipping the fatigues together. Like they hadn’t done anything at all. “We have a mission to finish, so we better get on that.”

Snake was baffled. “Did I...do something wrong?” Misread a signal somewhere? There hadn’t been any time where Otacon’d told him to stop. They’d played at not knowing each other but now Otacon was acting like Snake had just spat on him. Otacon didn’t answer at first, shuffling toward the furthest corner where his laptop had gone flying. He got down on his knees, feeling for the cold metal of the casing, back turned.

“No,” He said, eventually. Snake couldn’t see his face. “No. You didn’t do anything wrong. I did.”

“You —?”

“The mission,” Otacon said, terse, standing back up straight and holding the retrieved laptop to his chest like it was body armor. He looked sallow, and where the thin strip of light falling through the cracked doorway hit him he was monochrome, colorless. “This — we won’t talk about all this. The mission. Strut H. We gotta go.”

Snake blanched, but didn’t say anything. “Okay.” He reached for the crook of Otacon’s arm, expectant, but Otacon dodged it.

“I think,” Otacon said, slowly, voice heavy, “I can make it the rest of the way. Better to split up.”

“Okay.” Snake said, again. His mouth felt like it was filled with cotton.

Otacon gave him a look then, something unreadable for a man with such an unusually open face. It looked almost apologetic. Like he’d taken advantage of him. He didn’t know what to make of it but something unpleasant had taken up residence in the pit of his stomach, heavy like an iron ball.

“Bye, Pliskin,” Otacon said, with all the affection of a stranger on a train, and slipped out the door of the supply room. When Snake went to open the door, he was nowhere to be seen.


	2. i'd blame it on the person that nobody knows i am

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hi again! please be warned: this chapter involves a discussion of past child sexual assault and rape. nothing is shown in graphic detail, only recounted verbally. recreational drugs are also used. thanks for sticking with me; i hope to have this done in one more chapter.

There was no need to recount the rest of Big Shell. The death of a father, a brother, a sister. Raiden, Snake, Otacon. Fortune, Fatman, Vamp, Solidus. Olga, Emma.

Emma. Emma. Emma.

They’d made it as far as Otacon’s hotel room where he collapsed on the bedspread, Emma’s parrot fluttering around the room, the beating of its wings sending documents flying off of surfaces. _Hal, I miss you,_ it shrieked, _I miss you, I miss you._ Snake stood there in the doorway as if frozen, watching the heave of Otacon’s shoulders as his body was wracked with deep, heavy sobs. Otacon cried often but never, never like this, in all the time Snake had known him. To think that they spent that moment together in the storage room today instead of years ago felt impossible, like Snake had lost track of his own time. 

His own hideout was across town but he was far too tired to even consider making the trip, weary and covered new cuts and bruises. Otacon’s face and hands were smeared with his sister’s clotted blood, too preoccupied during the mission to wipe it off. Snake peeled off his sneaking suit, stripping it down to his waist. He sat down on the bed next to Otacon, and put a heavy, bare hand on his partner’s shoulder, hoping that the warmth of it seeping into Otacon’s skin would say all of the things he didn’t know how to.

“She — she was the only one I had left,” Otacon whispered, eyes pinned to the ugly motel room carpeting. “The only good thing.” He buried his face in his dirty hands, fists pressed against his eyeballs under his blood-flecked glasses, and made a wounded noise. Snake gripped his shoulder tighter. They sat there for half an hour, Otacon crying till his throat went ragged. Snake finally stood up, dropping his hand to hold Otacon’s, careless of the blood caked under his fingernails. He led him wordlessly to the bathroom, sat him on the toilet cover, and began removing his shoes. Otacon — Hal — sniffed, looking up at him.

“What are you…?”

“You’ve got blood in your hair,” David said, voice rough. “And you’re tired.”

He was expecting an argument, something snappish, but it never came. Hal offered David his wrist and allowed him to unbuckle his Casio, set it on the tank cover of the toilet. David pulled off Hal’s shirt, remembered the dried cum on the hem, tried not to wince. He felt guilty now, defiling him like that. Under the fluorescent bathroom light David could see the fine dust of hair covering Hal’s arms, his chest, his abdomen, how his body was smattered with moles and freckles, the jut of his collarbones across his narrow shoulders. But this was different, gentle, chaste. 

“You won’t be able to get out of the suit yourself,” Hal said, so quiet. He undid the fastenings at the back, helped David peel it down to his ankles and finally off, till David stood over him in the bathroom in nothing but his boxer-briefs. Then came Hal’s jeans. Eventually they stood before each other naked, and David tipped his chin back, not proud but honest. Let Otacon look at him, every pit of bullet scar, every bruise, every place where the skin puckered from ancient sutures. Hal’s body was unmarred; the difference was day and night. David wondered at that, more than a little jealous of his partner’s smooth skin, clear save for the occasional pockmark of an acne scar. He leaned over, turned on the shower, pulled Hal to stand in the tub with him.

He was hit by a memory of Hal dumping him half-dead into a bathtub full of lukewarm water after the tanker incident, when he’d nearly succumbed to hypothermia. He’d sat there watching David like a worried mother, his chin propped on his knuckles. He’d been murmuring something to himself, then, in a language Snake couldn’t understand. Hebrew. Praying for David, to a God neither of them were sure existed. Afterward, when he was sure David wouldn’t go into shock, he’d stood him under the hottest water their shower could produce, his hair and clothes soaking wet from the effort, glasses fogged with droplets of water and condensation.

Now David did the same for him, carefully removing his glasses and setting them on the toilet lid. He took a washcloth and cleaned him, gently, as if he was wiping dirt off a kid’s face. The water mixed with the blood on his jaw, in his hair, and rinsed it away, rivulets of scarlet on his pale neck. Hal’s eyes were hazy, unfocused, but he offered his hands when asked, allowed David to scrub at the dried blood between his fingers. He treated Hal with a kind of tenderness alien to himself, rinsing the shampoo out of his wet hair, and Hal simply let him, catatonic with grief, did not protest when David shuffled him out of the shower and dried him off. He got Hal dressed in sleep clothes and watched him wander off to bed, wordless, as he pulled on his own change of clothes, toweling the stray water out of his fringe.

Twenty minutes passed. Hal turned over in his sleep, murmuring something. David excused himself to the balcony and lit up a Lucky Strike, smoking it all the way down to the filter as he watched the half-wreckage of Manhattan glimmer across the Bay. He stubbed his smoke out on the railing, lit another, then another, till his pack was down to one. David checked his own watch: 3:30am. He stretched his back, sore from the mission, and headed back inside.

Miraculously the bird had fallen asleep, perched on one of the lamps jutting out from the wall. David padded across the carpet, toward the door.

“Dave?”

Hal’s voice was soft, thick with sleep. David stopped in his tracks. “Yeah?”

“‘S really late. Just stay the night.”

David looked at the double bed occupying most of the inn room, dubious. “I’m not gonna sleep in an armchair, Hal.”

“Don’t be dumb,” Hal yawned, shuffling over to one side of the bed. “Just take the other side. ‘Sfine.”

He raised an eyebrow, but of course it was too dark and Hal was far too tired to notice. Heaving a sigh, he kicked off his shoes, ignoring how the bed dipped when he slotted himself in beside his partner, a solid reminder of his own presence. The bed was warm, Hal’s bare skin where it touched his own soaking him in heat. He slept with his own back to Hal’s but he felt enveloped by him, sinking under a thick, mellow sheet of exhaustion, finally letting the remaining traces of adrenaline ebb from his body. 

Hal shifted, snuffling against the comforter. He stuck his ankle out, seeking, and rubbed it against David’s as if to ground him. 

“Thanks, Dave,” Hal said, voice a whisper, as David finally gave in to his own body and sank below the dark waters of sleep. 

—

Hal woke up to early sunlight cutting through the curtains, a thin sliver falling across his face. He shifted; Dave’s back was a warm line against his front. When he went to grab for his glasses he realized his hand rested on Dave’s forearm, the thick hair there scratching at his palm. Hal froze, dropping away from his partner’s arm, his back, sitting up in bed and edging as far away from him as possible, as if he’d just touched a red-hot iron.

The commotion set Emma’s parrot off, shrieking high-pitched and flying directly into David’s slack, sleeping face.

“Shit!” Now it was his turn to lunge out of bed in an explosion of feathers and batting hands, trying to keep the bird from biting at his nose which it seemed more than determined to do. It landed on Hal’s shoulder, veritably glaring at Dave with beady little eyes, like Hal was something to be protected. “Why the hell does that thing like you?”

Hal stood up, scratching at the concave of the bottom of his ribs. He couldn’t miss the way Dave’s eyes slid up with his hand, watching the hem of his shirt. Things were...different, now. He realized, dully, that Dave had seen him naked. “Dunno. I probably just look like her.”

“But you guys aren’t related.”

“Parrot doesn’t know that.”

Dave grunted his concession, rounding the bed toward the crumpled pack of Lucky Strikes on the little inn room desk, set down next to Hal’s laptop. He shook it, frowned. The kind of expression he got when he was almost out of cigarettes.

“I’m gonna go have a smoke.”

Hal set the bird on the lamp overhanging the nightstand, raising one finger in caution as if to say _stay._ It blinked at him, unmoving. 

“Hal,” it said.

“I’ll come with you.”

Dave raised an eyebrow at him. Hal almost never volunteered his time for a smoke break, always a bit dramatic about the smell. He made a soft noise of acknowledgement. “Suit yourself.”

They sat out on the balcony, half-dressed in t-shirts and their underwear. Dave crossed his ankle over his knee as he struck the match and Hal watched the early morning sun light the hair on his thighs a burnished gold. He took a drag and the line of his chest rose with it, the outline of his pectorals softened by the ratty old Kate Bush t-shirt he was wearing. Hal found it oddly identifying; the signifier of an interest from a man who’d been bred and trained to have none. He was handsome. Hal felt sick to his stomach.

“Kate Bush?” Hal asked, trying desperately for a joke. “That’s a bit more abstract than I was expecting. Why not Van Halen? The Eagles? Metallica?”

The lit end of Dave’s cigarette crackled. He held the smoke in his mouth, exhaled slow. His throat was rough with days-old stubble. “Grown man can’t like art rock or something?”

“Just didn’t take you for the type.”

“Mm.” Dave tapped the ashes off the end of the cigarette, contemplative. “I like all those other guys too. But weird’s a rare commodity. Sometimes I just wanna listen to a lady sing about the plot to Emily Bronte novels. You won’t get that outta Van Halen.”

It was strange, the calm of the morning, the lack of any kind of urgency. Emma was still dead. For once, Hal was allowed to sit with the weight of it. The conversation distracted him enough that he didn’t feel big, ugly tears threatening to crash whatever thin barriers he’d managed to build since last night.

“You wanna tell me what happened yesterday?”

“What could I possibly say to you.” Well, there went any kind of uneasy peace. Hal shifted in his seat, cagey. He watched his thin legs cross and uncross, pulled at the plaid patterned fabric of his boxers.

“We fucked in a storage closet and you barely even looked at me after.” Dave looked over at him, his eyes partially obscured by his fringe, haloed in the sunlight. “I know a lot of shit happened yesterday and this ain’t even at the top of the list but if I hurt you somehow I need to—”

“That’s not what — gimme that.” Hal snatched the cigarette from Dave’s fingers and took a long, agitated drag. Dave stared at him, boggling. Yeah, he’d never seen him smoke before. That was right. “You didn’t _rape_ me, if that’s what you’re concerned about. I was, unfortunately, one hundred percent into it.” Then, as if to himself, “I think I’d know what that feels like.”

Dave blinked at him, stunned. He leaned forward in the cheap plastic deck chair, fingers steepled at his lips. Hal kept his eyes on the skyline, the distant Washington Bridge, and took another drag, his hands shaking. This was something he didn’t do, ever since he’d left home. It was something Julie’d taught him and every time he’d thought about starting up again he’d remember the lipstick on the filter with revulsion. Now he didn’t care, needed something to ground himself again.

“Your stepmother,” Dave said slowly, comprehending. He hadn’t commented any further yesterday, all of them too caught up in averting another Metal Gear disaster. But he’d heard him. 

“And it didn’t feel like it, at the time. Or the next time. Or the next. My father didn’t love her and he wasn’t ever there for me. So she found the next best thing. And Emma, she,” Hal set his jaw hard, his molars grinding together. His little sister. “She suffered for it. What we did.”

“You were a kid, Hal.”

“And I should’ve known,” Hal snapped, pulling his glasses off his face. He looked at Dave then, and he knew the tears had come; his vision was crowding with them, making David’s face swim orange with sunlight. “Maybe not about Julie but I should’ve known. For E.E. — for Emma’s sake.”

The cigarette was close to burning down to the filter; he handed it back to Dave, burying his head in his hands, curling up in his chair. His palms were wet with the tears he tried to hide from his friend. “God. I’m so messed up.”

Dave was never good at consolations. He wasn’t the kind of guy who had the right words to say, _You couldn’t consent, Hal, you were fourteen, you wanted attention and you got the wrong kind. It’s not your fault and she and your old man can both burn in hell._ Instead he put his hand on Hal’s arm, the heat of his touch steady and reassuring. Hal sobbed, ragged, let his glasses drop to the floor and wrapped his hands around Dave’s, brought it to his cheek. His touch was alarmingly gentle, caressing the side of his jaw, the back of his knuckles wicking away the tears. Hal’s shoulders shook with each inhale, and Dave simply touched him through it, points of skin-on-skin contact, utterly silent. His cigarette sat stubbed out on the balcony railing, next to the ones from last night, a perfect row.

“I had sex with girls a few times after I left, got infatuated with them. Never for reasons that made sense, or with much justification. I think I just associated positive attention with wanting sex. Like it was the only way to keep them happy.” Hal shook his head, fingers tightening around David’s wrist. “It wasn’t ever any good. I think the first time I ever actually came inside a girl I had a panic attack and had to go throw up. She broke up with me a couple days later. I don’t blame her. That’s a fucking weird thing to do when you’re supposed to be, like, basking in the afterglow or whatever.”

He knew he was practically vomiting words at this point, things he wouldn’t have told even the psych evaluator when he was still just a candidate to develop war weapons. It was like a rusty valve had been opened up and he didn’t know how to shut it again. Dave said nothing, just sat with him, listened. He was always a good listener.

“I never did anything like that with a guy before. You were the first. And I — I thought I did it because I was so fucked in the head. I _still_ think that. That I dragged you down with me into my…” He searched for the right words, something to blunt the horrible language in his head down to something manageable. Like throwing a butter knife at Dave instead of a long, sharp kitchen knife. “...Issues.”

He looked at Dave, who had his eyes downturned, contemplative. His eyelashes were caught by the light, glowing against the sweep of his cheeks. He dropped his hand from Hal’s cheek with one last caress, turned his chair to face him, set both fists on his knees.

“Hal. Listen to me.” His fingers were firm on Hal’s legs, urgent. “I have been dragged through every kind of shit you can think of since I was nineteen, and even more before that. Made to feel like nothing. Expendable. An...animal,” he said, with some difficulty, grasping for the right words. It was more than he’d ever spoken in all the time Hal had known him. “About as special as a piece of dog shit stuck to a shoe. And mostly, I still believe that. I have been conditioned and programmed and indoctrinated better than most cult members and I don’t know if I will ever fully break myself of it. But there is nothing, in the years I’ve known you, that you’ve done to make me feel degraded.”

Hal looked at him as if he’d been stricken, open in his disbelief. He felt the tears swimming again, a new round threatening.

“I fucked you because I wanted to do it. Not because you’re some kind of expert seductress luring me to the dark side. There _is_ no dark side here. No good and bad. It’s just you, and me, and this thing we did.” A beat. “Do you understand me?” 

Hal scrubbed at his face with the heel of his hand, wiping at stray tears. He was sniffling. “Yeah,” he said, voice cracking. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Good,” Dave said, standing up. Hal looked from behind his fist at the thick muscle of his thighs, the slight point of compression between the skin and his boxer-briefs. “I’ll be back. I gotta grab some more smokes.”

Hal watched him leave, the curve of his shoulders as he slid the balcony door open in search of his jeans. Dave’s biceps were tight against the sleeves of his t-shirt.

“I’m so screwed,” he muttered.

—

They stayed in the hotel room for one night longer, languid now that there was nothing for them to be urgently doing. Dave came back an hour and a half later with three packs of Lucky Strikes, a jug of water, lunch meat, a loaf of Wonderbread, and most unexpectedly, an eighth of weed.

“You’re joking.”

“I’m really not.”

Hal took off his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “You bought it _loose?”_

“Look, beggars can’t be choosers when it’s the weird guy at the convenience store offering to sell you weed. I got rolling paper too.”

“Oh my god. I’m shit at rolling.”

“Guess I’ll have to do it for you.”

Hal blinked at him. “Since when can you roll joints?”

“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me.” Dave paused. “‘S good for pain relief.”

They eventually ended up back on the balcony after a couple hours of lazing and watching television, with an end table from inside dragged out to sit between them. Partially it was because they’d agreed they shouldn’t smoke with an animal around, no matter how much Dave hated it. Partially it was because Dave was scared of it. 

Dave was rolling a joint on the table. Hal watched as he licked the paper to seal it, pink tongue running along the edge. He held it up to inspect, then handed it over.

“What the hell,” Hal said, accepting it then peering at the handiwork. “You weren’t joking. This thing’s packed crazy tight.”

“Mhmm,” Dave hummed, tossing Hal his matchbook. “You do the honors.”

So he did. They had white-bread-and-salami sandwiches, passing the joint back and forth and shooting the shit. 

“Fuck it’s like I’m back in college,” Hal laughed, holding up his sandwich. “These are god awful. Wonderbread’s stuck to the back of my teeth, see?” He dug a strip of half-melted bread from off the roof of his mouth with his thumbnail, showed it to Dave, who cringed. “Ewww.” He flicked it over the railing, already too stoned to care about how gross he was being. 

“Your table manners suck, man,” Dave said, but his body was shaking with laughter too. They ate till their mouths were fuzzy with the awful sugary bread and then they demolished the jug of water because they were high and thirsty. It was far from a quality meal but to them it was a king’s banquet. 

They jumped topics, taking hits now and then. They got onto the topic of Dave. Specifically the topic of Dave’s ass. 

“Can I admit something.”

“Huh.”

“I’ve kind of always wanted to smack your ass.”

Dave snorted water out of his nose, had to wipe at it with his shirt hem. All this time and they were still outside in their underwear, Dave’s jeans forgotten somewhere at the foot of the bed. “What the fuck — why?”

“I wanted to see how much it would jiggle.”

He couldn’t contain it anymore, throwing his head back and laughing full-throated. Hal liked it when he did that. He wanted to lick his neck. “You’re so fuckin’ weird.”

“No way I’m the first person to mention it! Have you seen that thing?”

“I didn’t really think there was anything that special about it.”

“Bullshit,” Hal said, standing up suddenly. “Bullshit. Get up, up.” Dave obeyed, left the joint smoldering in the ashtray. “Come here.”

Without any further ado, Hal grabbed a handful of Dave’s ass, kneading at it. God, it fit in his hand so nice. “You see this? Regular people don’t all just get born with this. You’re just walking around with this and you don’t _know.”_

“You—” Dave started, argumentative, but he arched his back into Hal’s touch, face going ruddy with blush. He retaliated by grabbing Hal’s ass now, hand sliding directly up the leg of his boxers, completely fucking shameless. “You aren’t so bad off yourself, you know.”

There was troubled silence, a beat of nothing as if the gears in their heads were turning, trying to decide the next move. Either of them could disengage right now, pretend nothing ever happened, and it would be fine. 

Hal looked at Dave. His eyes were blown nearly black, long hair curling over the base of his neck. He took his hand away and then struck him, hard and sudden, on the ass with a sharp crack. 

_“Ohfuck,”_ Dave exhaled sharply, breath ghosting over Hal’s face, and that was it. Hal’s conscience left the building. 

He didn’t know how but they ended up crushed against the wall forming the shelter of the balcony, Dave’s hands scrabbling over the stucco surfacing. His ass was pushed up against Hal’s cock, quickly filling out in his boxers, staining the front with precum. 

“You don’t know,” Hal breathed, “How fucking long I wanted to do this.”

“I have — a pretty good idea,” Dave said, head pressed into his forearms, pushing back on Hal as hard as he could. His dick was hard over the cleft of Dave’s ass and he was so fucking needy for it. Hal practically ripped his boxers down to his knees, did the same with Dave’s underwear, hooking it under his ass. 

“Nghh,” was all Hal could manage as he thrust against Dave, fucking his cock along the crack of his ass, relishing in the heat of it. He realized they didn’t have any condoms. “Can I just—?”

“Jesus, Hal, do what you want,” Dave groaned. The muscles in his back shook so pretty with tension. “Take what you want from me.”

“Oh my god you can’t just _say_ that,” Hal complained, but he sped up, rutting hard against him. He spat into the palm of his hand and took Dave’s dick into it, running the other up his belly, bunching that Kate Bush shirt up underneath his armpits. Dave shuddered under him. His cock was so hard the crown had almost entirely pushed forward out of the foreskin, leaking over his fist as he pumped him. Hal’s head was fucking spinning. He was so horny he wasn’t sure he was going to last long but Dave felt so good under him, chest heaving and sweaty beneath his hand. He tweaked a nipple and Dave dropped his head, made a wrecked sound from deep in his sternum. 

“Oh god. Oh, god, Hal. _Fuck.”_ They were going at it so hard Hal was drawing back far enough for there to be a slap of skin on skin, mesmerized by the beads of sweat rolling down Dave’s back. His cock was dribbling all over Hal’s hand as he worked him over, dripping onto the concrete floor of the balcony. It occurred distantly that anyone could have seen them from the apartment complex adjacent to them but the idea only made him even more shamefully dizzy. 

“Dave, Dave, I’m gonna,” Hal warned, hips slowing to a painful grind, the last motions before a guy blows his load.

“Fucking do it then,” Dave snarled, smacking a hand on his own ass to spread it, groaning when the head of Hal’s cock inadvertently caught on his hole. “Do it to me.”

Hal buried his face and whined into Dave’s sweaty shoulder as he came, fat drops of it catching in the divot at the base of his spine, the column of his back. He jerked Dave off hard and slow, till his hips snapped and he groaned, spattering Hal’s fist and the wall with cum. 

They stood there, panting, listening to the sound of each other’s breathing. The hair on Dave’s chest was thick and wiry. There were a couple places where his cum had gotten caught in the thicket of it on his stomach, sticky to Hal’s touch. 

“Are you okay?” Hal asked, voice shaky. 

“‘M good,” Dave murmured, “Really, really good. You?”

“Me? I’m excellent.” There was still the screaming feeling of wanting to run away, of shame in his belly, but he liked standing here, back to front, with his cum cooling on Dave’s ass. “Really.” 

Dave stood up, pulled his underwear back into place, while Hal did the same. 

“You’ve got cum in your chest hair.”

“I also got yours in my asscrack,” Dave intoned, “I’m gonna need a shower either way.”

Hal laughed, weakly, trying to cover up how much he liked that. “Okay, fair enough.”

—

They showered. Hal managed to run out to a pet store and came back with a birdcage balanced against one hip: small, but it’d have to make do for now. He shuffled Emma’s parrot inside so it would stop terrorizing Dave, fed it, and laid a towel over the top. They watched TV in bed, Dave with a beer balanced on his hip.

They went out on the deck and got high again. Dave kissed him on the mouth, thinking nothing of it, and Hal was too mellow to consider the implication. They ended up in bed, Dave on top of him, pumping both their cocks together in his fist. Hal looked at him, eyes hazy, mouth half-open at the motion of Dave’s hand, focused on his bottom lip caught between his teeth. Dave came in long, hot stripes over Hal’s belly and he did the same, arching his back, some of it catching on his chin. 

“Fuck,” He groaned, spent, as Dave swiped it off his face with his thumb, sucking it clean. They laid together for a while after, Dave’s knee hooked over his own, soft cock nudging at his hip. Hal had to check out of the room in the morning. He found himself not looking forward to it, as if this strange bubble that had formed between themselves and the outside world threatened to burst at any moment. 

“We should start looking for Olga’s baby,” Hal murmured, voice slurred with sleep. Dave stroked his flank, calloused pads of his fingers catching on his ribs. 

“What are we gonna do with her?” He asked, but the unspoken question hung heavy between them: _Raise her?_ The idea of rearing a kid made Hal’s hands shake. He was thirty and hadn’t even considered it before. The idea of raising a child as badly as his father did him was heartstopping. And now Sunny wouldn’t even have a mother—

“Dunno. But she can’t stay wherever she is.”

“Hn.” Dave closed his eyes, pushed his beer to his lips. “Okay.”

They slept, Dave pressed against his back, arm draped over his narrow waist. He smelled like cigarettes and aftershave. In the morning Hal packed what little luggage he had, folding the sneaking suit into the bottom of his suitcase. Dave handed him a bagel with a heavy hand on his shoulder, pressed his nose into the nape of his neck, as if to memorize the scent of him. He was wearing a leather motorcycle jacket, the elbows worn with use. 

“Alright,” Hal said, adjusting his glasses at the bridge, “Think that’s the last of it.”

“Can you check out on your own? I still gotta grab my stuff from the other place.”

“Sure.” Dave’s hand slid from his shoulder, the crook of his elbow, until it had fallen away completely. He opened the door, casting Hal a glance over his shoulder.

“Won’t be long. Maybe an hour. I can pull the van around.”

“Okay.”

The door shut behind him. Hal felt as though whatever glass castle he’d been living in for the past two days was shattering, glittering shards coming down around him. He remembered the ghost of that kiss the night before, open-mouthed and needy, hands in his shirt, when the both of them were high as a kite. 

“I miss you,” The parrot said, from inside its cage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> huge shoutout to my stoner friends who i had to grill about "how much is a normal amount of weed to buy from the weed man for this specific occasion" so i wouldn't write this looking like a complete fool. i have only ever had one whole edible in my whole life and it got me so zooted i redownloaded overwatch after like three years.
> 
> snake likes kate bush because who else possibly has the range to drop wuthering heights.


	3. i'd laugh in the parade at all the people hissing, knowing i'm the one they hate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ok so: things are not going as planned, this chapter is a fucking monster that i could not justify making any longer. NEXT CHAPTER IS THE LAST ONE, I SWEAR. i know most people tend to be like "sweet, more of that thing i like!" but i don't like continuously stringing people along and try to write with a tangible ending in mind. so please bear with me!
> 
> warnings applicable to this chapter: homophobia, both mentioned in the past and from a minor character. use of an antisemitic slur, also mentioned in the past. some not-so-savory blackmail involving a gay dude from other gay dudes. this chapter is kind of A Lot so please be warned.

Things went back to normal, afterwards.

Well, mostly.

They hopped into the van and took the 95 all the way down to Florida, the ruin of downtown Manhattan eventually just shapes in Otacon’s rearview mirror, jagged buildings jutting out against the skyline like so many crooked teeth. Florida, where everyone drove with a handgun in their glove compartment. They wouldn’t likely be bothered there, he reasoned. 

Which is why a week later he didn’t expect to be walking down the street on the outskirts of Miami with Snake, peeling an orange and jabbering away, to find —

“Oh holy shit,” Otacon said, dropping his half-peeled orange on the sidewalk. Snake skidded on one heel, stepped backward so as to not outpace him. His hair was pulled back into the best ponytail he could manage, maybe a poor excuse for a disguise but no one seemed too curious about who either of them were around here.

“What?” Snake said, swiveling his head to look at whatever Otacon was staring at. It was a little secondhand electronics store, with various sizes of box television sets stacked on top of each other in a pyramid, all tuned to the same TV channel — CNN. And the segment of the moment was —

“Jesus Christ.” Footage of Snake, fully done up in the sneaking suit, filmed at a distance with a fuzzy cell phone camera but there was no mistaking it was him. Below him the headline screamed _SOLID SNAKE FOUND ALIVE AT GROUND ZERO OF ARSENAL INCIDENT._

“Well,” Otacon said weakly, taking off his glasses and polishing them, “that’s unfortunate.”

—

Normal, but different. In that almost everyone in the dingy little apartment complex that only barely didn’t qualify as a slum recognized Snake, but only that. The shadow of realization would pass their faces but their temporary neighbors kept to themselves and largely seemed to keep quiet. Otacon didn’t know whether they feared _him_ or they feared the idea of ten different government agencies circling the block busting down doors in search of him. It seemed like an unacknowledged agreement between the two of them and the rest of the complex that keeping the state out of everyone’s business would be the most mutually beneficial course of action.

“We’re gonna have to figure something else out, eventually,” Otacon said, cracking his knuckles at the battered breakfast room table serving as his makeshift desk. His various monitors and hard drives were set up on its surface, a little militia of electronics. “They know you’re alive and eventually they’re going to know my face, too, which sucks considering as of right now most outlets think I’m several people. Something more long-term than this fly-by-night crap.”

“Could get a house boat,” Snake said, mostly as a joke, but withered under the look Hal shot him.

“Ha, ha. If I never had to see water again I’d be a happy guy.”

Snake shrugged, signalling his concession. “You’re looking for some kind of long-term aircraft, though it’s pretty hard to come by.” A beat; he chewed on his fingernail in lieu of lighting a cigarette to avoid pissing Otacon off too much. “I can definitely keep an eye out.”

“Table that, then.” He’d been the one to bring it up but the idea was giving him jitters for reasons he couldn’t explain. Otacon caught his lip between his teeth, concentrating. He needed a couple more lines of code for this particular bug, something to send through the Pentagon’s computers in what was mostly one last hail Mary for any new information on the Patriots. Big Shell had been a dead end but the explanation of the Patriots simply being all dead was too convenient of an answer for him. “Hey, you want dinner from that Thai place down the block? I can go pick it up if you place the order.”

Snake drummed his fingers on the table, contemplative. Otacon looked up, saw the corner of Snake’s mouth twitching, as if already dreaming up his order. He looked...oddly normal, standing in the living room, contemplating his dinner. Less severe. It reminded Otacon of the liminal space of the hotel room, floating outside of space and time. “Sure. Gimme your order.”

—

Their next couple days were spent probing for information, poking at the American government’s cybersecurity defenses. Mei Ling and Nastasha were silent but likely busy with their own end of research. Raiden was...somewhere, but had agreed to go find Olga’s kid as long as they got hard coordinates for her. 

The downside was that the two of them got restless, Snake pacing the apartment with an unlit cigarette shoved between his teeth. They ate cans of lukewarm Chef Boyardee or microwaved Hebrew Nationals because neither of them felt up to cooking anything more involved. Snake took to running in the morning before the sun came up and would come back soaked in sweat from the humid Florida air anyway, Otacon watching from over the top of his computer screen as the early dawn light flooding through their window shades made the sweat on his bare shoulders gleam like little pearls. 

On nights when neither of them had anything better to do they usually got very, very drunk. They had a bottle of Fireball for this occasion, passing it back and forth and wincing at the harsh cinnamon taste. This is what they did tonight, sitting on the living room floor, playing some shitty Japanese B-movie horror that neither of them were watching anymore since Otacon had gotten too drunk to translate. 

“Tell me, man,” Otacon said after a lull in the conversation, dangling the Fireball by the neck in a slow circle and watching the amber liquid swirl inside. It was evening and the low sun cut through the cracks in the shades, throwing little pink-orange knives of light across the wooden floor. “You told me you had sex with guys before, right? I’m not going crazy here?”

Snake barked a startled laugh. He was smoking indoors, something Otacon didn’t particularly feel inclined to lecture on right about now. “You got a good memory. Yeah, I did. Years ago.”

“Who with?”

He blanched, electing to take a long drag from his cigarette. Otacon watched him, the bottle going still. Snake was wearing a tank top and athletic shorts, old gunshot pocks and grazes riddling his shoulders. He was getting very tan from all of the sunlight. 

“My old unit-mate. Frank.”

Otacon blinked. He handed Snake the bottle of liquor, adjusted his glasses. “Fox?”

“Yeah. When you’re in that sort of environment, things kinda…” Snake gestured nebulously, his Lucky Strike perched between two fingers. “You’re fighting all the time, you only got each other for company. Like you’re the only one who gets the other guy, and the next minute...it just makes sense, I guess. Fucking, I mean. I punched Fox so hard I broke his fucking nose and I watched blood come gushing out of his face and the next time I see him, his nose’s all packed up with gauze and shit and he’s got two black eyes. And I open my mouth to tell him how sorry I am and he squeezes my face in his hand and kisses me and he tastes like blood. And...one thing led to another after that, I guess.”

Otacon looked at his own hands, considering. He thought of Snake at twenty, fresh-faced and smooth-skinned, grappling with another man till he had him pinned on the mat. He couldn’t visualize Grey Fox’s face so he imagined his own instead and felt dirty for it, face burning.

“Are you gay, Snake?” He blurted, eyes still glued to his own fingernails.

Snake did not say anything. Otacon heard an exhalation, smelled tobacco smoke. Heard the _thunk_ of the bottle being set down on the floor. He did not dare look at his partner. 

“Does it really matter to you either way?”

Now it was Otacon’s turn to feel caught out, turning the question back on him like that. “Uh. No. Yes?” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, frustrated. He reached for the Fireball again, took a long pull of the whiskey. “I just. Read all this shit about soldiers and sailors and cowboys having sex with each other, and I don’t know if it’s for a lack of options or—”

“You think about how often guys like me are having gay sex?” Snake cut in, an eyebrow raised. Otacon never wanted to fucking disappear more than in that moment. He knew how red his face was, and even the sunset couldn’t do much to hide it.

“Th-th-that’s not what I meant! I—”

“I like sex with guys,” Snake said slowly, considering his words, turning them over like small pieces of gold. “I liked sex with you, Hal. I know you probably don’t want to hear that. I don’t mind what you decide to call me for that, gay or bisexual or a fucking fairy for all I care. If I wanted to have sex with a woman I would, and I have.”

A long, unsettling silence permeated the air then. Snake put his cigarette back to his lips, taking a drag, and Otacon watched the long, smooth line of his throat. The television set made the short stubble on his neck glow blue. He wanted so badly to be like Snake, so cool, so uncaring about what others thought of him. So unconcerned with defining himself. So unlike Otacon, scrawny and nerdy and so aware of what other people thought of him. He knew Snake’s childhood was no walk in the park but he thought of a kid strong enough to defend himself. 

“The first time I got called faggot was when I was twelve,” Otacon said, his own voice startling himself. “Actually, what the kid specifically called me was a ‘little kike faggot’ to which I said, ‘Well, what am I getting bullied for this time? Being a kike or being a faggot?’...He did not like that. I came home with a black eye.”

He looked at Snake, who was regarding him silently, with wide eyes. He’d never told anyone about this, not since his father looked at him with a kind of disappointed pity that afternoon that screamed _you’re just as weak as me, and I resent you for it._

“Emma was only a toddler then. She saw my busted up face and she cried and cried and cried no matter how much Julie tried to calm her. I told her I couldn’t do anything about it but she’d only stop crying if I let her play nurse, so she sat me down and covered my face in butterfly stickers and she told me they’d help me heal faster. And I,” Otacon laughed bitterly to cover the lump in his throat, taking off his glasses, “I learned that day that people are gonna hate me for shit I can’t help even if I wasn’t a skinny loser who liked Gundam. But on the other hand, people like my sister loved me unconditionally. So maybe it wasn’t all bad.”

He didn’t say anything more than that. It would be easy to admit it, make the joke, _I guess that kid was right after all,_ but it was too new, too raw. Too uncertain. Snake sat up, bringing his thumb to his own chin.

“Jesus, Hal,” he said. “I would’ve fucking killed him.”

They sat with that in silence, Snake’s words hanging heavy over them. If Otacon were a normal guy maybe he would have sought out Snake’s hand, held it between his palms. Instead, he was hyper aware of the apartment, their temporary home, the four walls enclosing them. There was a scuff mark that looked like a spider next to the electrical outlet that his attention had started to gravitate to lately, and now he found himself seeking it out.

The living room had become too familiar. He passed Snake the whiskey back and bit the inside of his mouth.

—

“Ah- _hah.”_ Otacon grinned, rubbing his palms together like some kind of evil mastermind. He was sure he looked deranged, computer screen flooding his already-pale skin and making his face float like the Wizard of Oz in the darkness of the kitchen. Snake was unloading groceries into the fridge, a wad of gum stuck between his teeth in lieu of a cigarette.

“Think you might need a light on in here, Dracula?”

“I’m having an epiphany here, Snake. Respect the vision.”

“I’ll respect it when you respect yours and hit a switch when the sun starts going down.” There was the sound of it flipping, yellow light soaking the kitchen and dining room in warmth. Otacon winced, eyes adjusting. “You were saying.”

“I’ve been tracing people with high-level defense and state positions, types that could realistically know about the Patriots, or Olga’s baby. Viruses I’ve been sending through their systems have mostly gotten caught by antivirus programs before any real sensitive info could make it back to me, but. But!”

“But…?”

“I got a list from their payroll department of recently retired high-level employees. So I’ve been on their tails, tracing them. Their online activity, that is. People aren’t really good at disguising themselves on the web these days, you know. Profiles that give away tons of information, favorite bands on a Facebook page becoming lyrics in a Fetlife username. Tons of new ways to exploit. Snake, have you ever heard of social engineering?”

“Otacon,” Snake warned, half-groaning as if he was already checking out of the conversation.

“Okay, okay, to the point. This guy, Harry Maybourne, right? Leaves the Pentagon, moves out of state. All the way down to Palm Beach, Florida.” Snake’s eyes widened, just a hair. Otacon’s grin goes from “smug” to “shit-eating.” “And he’s on pension, adult kid in college up in Boston. He’s bored. Really bored.”

Snake flattened the wad of gum against the roof of his mouth, blew a bubble till it popped with a soft _crack._ The remaining groceries lay forgotten on the counter, fridge door still ajar. His jaw worked over the gum. “I’m listening.”

“He’s gay, Snake. Found him in hookup chats. _Really_ not good at hiding the fact he’s a pensioned retiree, what with how often he’s trying to throw money at potential dates.” Otacon paused, leaning back from his computer, arms crossed. “He likes young guys.”

“So you’re trying to get something out of him.” Snake paused, drumming his fingertips on the linoleum countertop. “Uh, by having sex with him?”

“No, stupid! _Blackmail._ He wants to meet up. In Orlando.”

Snake gave him a puzzled look, scratching a thumbnail through the stubble on his chin. Then he murmured, as if to himself: “Disney World…”

“C’mon, Dave, don’t be an idiot. It’s a couple hours out for him. Tourist trap. Barely anyone you’ll see there on any given day is actually from there, so less chance of recognition. And,” Otacon looked around, as if they were being listened to, “A lot of gay bars.”

“Miami’s got gay bars.”

“His wife’ll get suspicious if he tells her he’s heading to Miami.”

“His w—” Snakes eyebrows were nearly hitting his hairline. “His _wife._ Oh my _god_ Otacon.”

“Hence the blackmail,” Otacon said, artfully flicking his wrists like a maestro ending a song. “He and his wife have a prenup. She divorces him, he loses half of everything. Including the nice little beach house on Palm Beach.”

“You’re fucking evil, man,” Snake said, but he was laughing all the same. “Seriously, where the hell did you get that from?”

“I’ve always been evil,” Otacon said, voice intentionally flat, “I’m just too cute for most people to notice.”

Obviously it was meant as a joke. And Snake threw his head back and laughed, throaty and loud. He liked when he could make him do that. _“Cute._ Yeah, Otacon, you’re adorable.”

Snake went back to loading the fridge with the remaining groceries. Otacon hid his smile behind his hand, even as his neck felt hot with blush.

—

They made the trip to Orlando the following Tuesday, setting out at 5 when the sun started to hang low on the horizon. Snake drove this time, a cigarette perched on his lower lip, window down to let out the smoke. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Otacon fidget at his shirt, long fingers pulling at the rayon fabric.

“I still don’t understand what’s wrong with what I was wearing,” Otacon had said, holding his arms out. He’d picked out a T-shirt and jeans, about the same as anything else he’d wear out of the house. It was one of his nicer shirts, with a more tasteful screenprint, however it was still a Neon Genesis Evangelion design, so Snake had steered him back to the bedroom and instructed him to pick something more formal. “It’s not like I have a particularly impressive body or anything, why bother dressing up?”

Now it was some weird button-up tropical-pattern deal, clearly a shirt he’d picked up some time ago and forgotten he owned. 

“It’s not about that,” Snake had said, shaking his head. “You work what you got, be confident, and people won’t care about the shit you can’t help. The guy you’re meeting up with’s one of those government types and one of your anime shirts doesn’t exactly scream ‘refined.’ Look, tuck in your shirt.”

Otacon did, raising an eyebrow at him.

“You have a real narrow waist and long legs. So show ‘em off. And,” He stepped forward, closing the gap between them to work a couple of the buttons on Otacon’s shirt open, exposing the skin down to his solar plexus. He’d shaved clean for this and looked good even if he wasn’t convinced of it. “Don’t button this thing up all the way, you’ll look like a poindexter.”

Otacon swallowed, turning pink all the way under his shirt collar. Clearly he wasn’t very used to showing off. “But what if I get cold?”

“You’re not gonna get cold. It’s fucking Florida. Can you trust me to know what I’m talking about? This is Espionage 101, here.” 

They were on the road until the sun was long since gone. Snake smoked, on and off, halfway through a pack of Lucky Strikes. Otacon’s hair was windswept by the time they made it to Orlando but it looked almost intentional, made him more handsome.

“I think I’m gonna throw up,” Otacon groaned, as they unloaded from the van and shook their legs out.

“You’ll be fine,” Snake said, though he wasn’t totally sure Otacon wouldn’t throw up.

“Why aren’t you dressed up?”

Snake was, indeed, not very dressed up in a Rush shirt with the sleeves cut off and blue jeans rolled at the ankles. “Because you’re going to be the hottest guy in the joint and I’m going to be no one.”

That’s what they’d agreed on, at least. Snake would sooner cut off a finger than let Otacon go alone, no matter if their target was a sixty year old retiree with an Internet addiction. He had a pistol tucked into the back of his waistband, just in case. Otacon would wheel and deal and if things got too hot to handle Snake was the backup.

It went like this: Otacon entered the bar first and Snake a few minutes after, long enough to plausibly have entered separately. He set himself up in the darkest corner of the room and lit up a cigarette, watching his partner’s back shift slightly under the colorful material of his shirt as he waited at the bar counter. Sure enough Maybourne was there within minutes, dressed in a polo shirt and khakis. He was tall, with silvery-black hair. Handsome, save for the godawful Palm Beach retiree uniform that made him cringe. Snake didn’t miss the glint of his watch, some chunky statement piece Defense Department guys couldn’t seem to get enough of. Ugh.

He seemed to buy Otacon’s deal, though, from the way he leaned toward him, put a hand on the crook of his elbow. Snake chewed on the filter of his smoke, crossed his feet at the ankles impatiently. He didn’t know why watching this felt so torturous, or why when Maybourne whispered something in Otacon’s ear and Otacon laughed loud and exaggerated he found himself grinding his teeth.

“Hey, stranger.” Snake nearly jumped a fucking foot in the air, sitting up. There was someone standing over him, a redheaded kid Snake pegged as not much older than nineteen. Absolute fucking mystery how he got in, though maybe this bar wasn’t age-restricted. “This seat taken?”

“Uh,” Snake said, which constituted enough of a _yes_ that the kid plopped himself right down next to him, so that they were sitting elbow-to-elbow, trapping him into the booth. Shit.

“I just thought you looked so lonely, sitting here on your own. Guy like you in a place like this should have a little company.” Well, he should have seen this coming. If Snake wanted to mope in a corner in peace he’d probably have to visit a regular-ass sports bar. He kept his eyes on the bar counter, studying Maybourne’s waist. He didn’t seem to be packing heat, but…

“Can I get you something to drink?”

Snake offered him a sidelong glance, eyes narrow. If this was gonna be how it goes then the next best option was freezing him off. “Don’t think you’re legal enough to buy me anything but a Coke,” he said, steepling his fingers over the sticky booth table.

“Hey, I’m twenty-one! C’mon,” the kid stuck his face in Snake’s line of sight, visibly moping. Snake exhaled hard through his nose, giving the kid a faceful of smoke that he valiantly tried to not cough through. “What’s your name, man? I’m Stevie.”

“Pliskin,” Snake grumbled, taking another drag. “Really, kid, I’m flattered, but you should try fishing somewhere else. I’m not really interested in guppies.” 

The kid, Stevie, sat back against the booth with a dismayed _thunk._ He really wasn’t bad looking by any means but Snake had long since stopped paying any real attention to college kids on spring break. No matter how persistent they were. 

Also, he looked a little too much like Meryl for Snake’s liking. 

“So what are you here for? You got a type?” Stevie followed Snake’s gaze toward the bar, faster than Snake could turn away, feigning disinterest. “Oh my god, bro, not _el dorko_ over there.”

“Keep running your mouth like that and I’ll use your tongue as an ashtray.”

“Fuck, you promise?” Snake offered him a withering look. “Kidding! Damn, you seriously have no sense of humor.”

“Tell you what,” Snake said, tapping the ash off the end of his cigarette, “I’ll let you order me an old fashioned and pretend to look interested in you and you can go tell all your little friends you got to order a drink for an older guy and take him home. Sound like a deal?” 

Stevie cocked his head to one side, doubtful. “That doesn’t really sound fair to me.”

“Other option is I football tackle you out of my booth right now and make you look really stupid in front of everyone here. It’s honestly your choice.”

If looks could kill Stevie would’ve had Snake in the ground by now. He crossed his ankle over his knee, leaning back in his booth and spreading his arms wide over the top of the seats and over Stevie’s shoulder, shaking it roughly in the most obnoxiously paternalistic manner Snake could muster. He smiled, chewing the cigarette filter between his upper and lower canines. 

“You are such an asshole,” Stevie said, but got up to go flag a bartender down anyway. Otacon was still at the bar and Maybourne was very much still putting the moves on him, his hand now on his knee. When Stevie came back with the old-fashioned, Snake downed half of it in one long sucking gulp, clearly agitated. 

“Jesus, man, that was like eight bucks, you wanna at least pretend to savor it first?” Stevie shifted his attention back toward Otacon, eyes pinned to the hand on his knee. “Stewing over here isn’t gonna do you any good. If you’re so jealous why not go shoot your shot?”

“Not that simple,” Snake gritted, chewing on the little black plastic straw floating in the cocktail glass till the mouth end was flat and gnarled. 

“Don’t see any ring on his finger.”

“Must be nice to go through life doing whatever you like,” he groused, searching for something that wouldn’t immediately give his real purpose here away. Snake settled for a half-truth: “I’m spotting for him. He met this guy online, wanted to make sure he wasn’t a fucking serial killer.”

“But you wish that was you up there.”

He felt cold then, opted to take another sip of his drink. Snake hoped that the whiskey would stem the gnawing feeling in his gut, but he was feeling less and less optimistic. Maybourne’s palm slid up over Otacon’s knee, onto his thigh. Snake chewed on his straw even harder. 

“What I think doesn’t matter.”

“Uh-huh,” Stevie said, unconvinced. He took a long drink out of his own cup, a Moscow mule by the scent of it. “You aren’t very good at concealing it. The resentment rolling off you’s fucking rancid, dude. You look about ready to kill Khakis over there.”

Whatever Snake was about to say next was cut off by the sudden movement of Otacon and Maybourne standing up from the bar counter and heading toward the back of the establishment, toward the restrooms. He had a hand on the small of Otacon’s back, holding him almost flush against his hip as they walked. 

“Huh,” said Stevie, “I think your buddy’s about to either get sucked off or murdered in the men’s bathroom.”

“Yep,” Snake replied, though he sounded more like he was being strangled.

This was part of the plan — lure Maybourne to the bathroom under the pretense of a hookup and then entrap him, needle him for the info they needed and then get out clean. Any state official worth their salt would know Snake’s face at a glance, but Otacon was nobody — a ghost, as far as most were concerned.

That being said, of course they had planned for contingencies.

“You got a watch?”

“Uh, yeah. Why?”

_Three minutes is all I need,_ Otacon had said, tapping his own Casio. _If three minutes pass and I don’t signal, something’s gone wrong._

“Two minutes, fifty seconds. Can you keep track of that?”

Stevie gave him a look as though he wanted to ask, but thought the better of it.

“Okay, as long as you aren’t gonna be having me calling the cops in the next half-hour.”

“Not necessary,” Snake removed the straw from his drink, tapped it on the edge of his glass, and downed the rest of it, the fire of the whiskey making his toes curl in his shoes. “You can trust me on that.”

Stevie seemed convinced to trust him about as far as he was capable of throwing him, but didn’t seem inclined to argue. They sat for what felt like forever, smoking his cigarette down to the filter, the lit end burning at his fingertips till he stubbed it out on the bar tabletop. Stevie watched the second hand tick along the face of his watch, his foot swinging so anxiously it shook the base of the table. 

“Two minutes.”

He watched the men’s room door, practically unmoving. It was covered with a lush illustration of a man in a harness. Snake thought of the size of Maybourne’s hands, Otacon’s thin wrists. Just one twist in the right direction and they’d break, perfect little fractures through the radius. He’d seen it before. He’d done it before.

Snake chewed on his fingernail, already worried down to the quick.

“One minute.”

He thought of Otacon’s legs. He was so self-conscious of them, hated the knobs of his knees, how skinny and bird-boned they were. When he stood up straight Snake thought he looked graceful. He thought of the way they fit perfectly around his own waist when he pressed him down against the mattress. He thought of them broken, like the legs of a deer left in the road.

But when you love someone, you have to be able to protect them. That was four years ago. It felt like Snake had known him his whole life.

“Ten seconds.”

He thought of Otacon’s glasses shattered under the heel of Maybourne’s shoe. He did not wait for the final ten seconds.

The next few moments were a blur to Snake; he was up over the table, scattering the ice in his drink everywhere, and covering the ground between the booth and the bathroom in long, determined strides. He thought of hands wrapped around Otacon’s long neck and clenched his teeth hard enough his jaw clicked. His palm connected with the poster-covered door and slammed it open without any thought. His head was a dull roar, deafened by pounding blood. 

“...Got a lot of fucking nerve, making me drive out here three god damn hours just to get blackmailed by a weedy little fag like you. I could nail you to the fucking _wall_ for this in court.”

Maybourne had Otacon pinned to the far end of the restroom by the shoulder. He was taller than Snake, skin liver spotted with age but his arms were strong and he could see the way Otacon struggled against him, breath hitching with nervous laughter.

“You weren’t calling me a fag ten minutes ago when you couldn’t shut up about how bad you wanted me choking on your dick.”

Snake realized he was sweating. The gun in his waistband felt like a brand against his lower back.

“Drop him. Right fucking now.”

Harry Maybourne turned to look at him over his shoulder, the first time Snake got a good look at his face the whole night. His eyes were a cruel blue. He looked like he was enjoying this.

“You should really stay out of other people’s business, shortstack.”

Snake did not dignify him with a witty response. It was more than he deserved. He saw the way his hand covered Otacon’s shoulder, the big gaudy sport rings covering his fingers, and all he knew was rage. He was on him in seconds, fist in his shirt collar, hauling him away to the adjacent wall and into a mirror. Maybourne’s skull connected with a harsh crack and the bathroom mirror broke, a halo of stress fractures radiating from the crown of his head out into the frame. He grabbed a fistful of Maybourne’s slicked-back hair and yanked till he shouted, pulled the gun from his waistband with his other hand and rammed it into his still-open mouth.

Maybourne screamed, muffled by the barrel of the gun. That was alright; it wasn’t like anyone was going to hear him.

“Here’s how this is gonna go,” Snake growled, pushing the gun further, further into Maybourne’s mouth, relishing in the way his teeth clicked painfully against the barrel. Snake heard Otacon’s breath hitch; in the corner of his eye he realized that he had not moved, fingers curled against the dark tiling of the wall. “You’re gonna give my friend here the info he needs, and we’re gonna let you go and pretend this never happened. You’re gonna go back to your little beach house and your sad little marriage and you’re gonna hope we don’t need anything else from you for as long as we live.” He retracted the barrel. “Do I make myself crystal-fucking-clear?”

Maybourne’s eyes were jagged little chips of ice, wild against the surrounding whites.

“Solid fucking Snake,” he said, as if addressing a cockroach, and then spat directly in his eye. Snake did not flinch, only shoved the gun back in, far enough this time to bump the back of his throat. He so badly wanted to pull the trigger, paint the broken glass of the mirror with Maybourne’s blood. It would be so easy. He turned off the safety, and Maybourne shuddered. There was sweat rolling down his temple.

Snake turned off the safety. Maybourne’s eyes were huge. “Say that name again and they’ll be mopping your brains off the floor.”

Maybourne nodded vigorously. Snake smiled at him, just letting his finger rest over the trigger, not on it but enough to threaten. 

He retracted the barrel to rest it up under his chin, still keeping the safety off. Otacon shakily cleared his throat. Why were his cheeks so pink? 

“As I was saying. I have our logs, all data connecting you to your chat handle, and our conversation from ten minutes ago recorded. And I have those backed up multiple times. You walk out of here right now, your wife gets all of it. It’s tied to an email scheduled to leave my drafts in an hour, so if anything happens to me it still goes. Only way to stop it, of course, is to give us the location of Sunny Gurlukovich. Which we know you have, since they put you in charge of arranging for her transport.”

“And what the fuck do you want with that little brat,” Maybourne’s question came as an accusation, as if the two of them were boogeymen. “Her mother’s dead. She’s not an asset anymore.”

“Sure she is,” Otacon bluffed. She wasn’t. There wasn’t anything special about Sunny Gurlukovich. It was simply that neither of them could bear the idea of leaving a child in Patriot custody.

“If she isn’t an asset anymore you’ll have no problem parting with her,” Snake said.

Maybourne looked at him. Looked at Otacon. Then, finally, heaved a sigh.

“She’s in New Mexico. Not that far away from the border. Look, you have a piece of paper?” 

“Way ahead of you,” Otacon produced a bar napkin and a pen. He nodded to Snake: _Let him go._ So he did, with some hesitation, clicking the handgun’s safety back on. Maybourne scribbled the address on the napkin and handed it back, his mouth in a thin, severe line.

“The place is fucking crawling with security so I don’t expect you two knuckleheads to even manage that kind of breach, but who knows,” Maybourne cocked an eyebrow, “Maybe you’ll surprise me. I really hope you won’t, though. Now, if you’ll be so kind. I gotta go take a fucking aspirin and feel sorry for myself.”

He shoved Snake aside, reaching for the handle to the door. Snake realized that the back of his head was bleeding from the mirror. Maybourne looked over his shoulder one last time to regard the two of them, his eyes steely.

“Don’t be mistaken. You’ll both regret this.”

“We’ll be long gone before you can try,” Snake said, with a dangerous grin.

The bathroom door closed. It was silent, once again. Snake unloaded his gun, breathing steadily through his nose, and tucked the weapon back in his waistband. Otacon was staring at him, the bar napkin folded neatly in his hand, but his knuckles were nearly white.

“What,” is what Snake would have said, if Otacon hadn’t kissed the breath out of him. 

He smelled good, Snake realized, smelled like soap and aftershave. Otacon’s hands skittered up over his arms, along his elbows, squeezing his bicep. Snake crowded him up against the wall with his hands on his shoulders, wincing apologetically when the back of his head hit the bathroom tile with a soft _thunk._ Not that Otacon seemed to mind much.

“Dave,” he breathed, practically half-begging. His shirt was rumpled and he was red in the face, blush crawling down his neck into the center of his exposed chest. Here in the bathroom it was like everything else had fallen away; the napkin was secure in his back pocket and now they were just Hal and Dave, Dave and Hal. “Oh, fuck. Dave. What you did to Maybourne. That was really fucking sexy.” 

Oh, David thought, a million miles away, _that’s why he’s blushing._ He felt a hot bolt of arousal, tightened his fingers into Hal’s sides.

“When he had his hand on your knee,” David murmured, voice spiky with jealousy, “God, I could’ve fucking killed him.”

Hal sucked a breath in through his teeth. His glasses were beginning to fog. David turned his attention to his neck, the angular curve of his throat, and bit down there. He thought of a necklace of bruises and pushed his fingers into the meat of Hal’s shoulders, desperate. David wanted to mark him. He wanted people to know.

They’d never touched each other like this. There was the languid sex in the hotel room, the fear-soaked encounter in the storage closet where anyone could’ve walked in. Now it was like none of that mattered, even in a restroom; all they had was the contact of skin on skin, the harsh, slow heat of their mouths sliding over each other. David caught Hal’s lip between his teeth and tore a moan out of him, his fingers digging further into his arms before pulling up over the strong line of David’s back, burying into his hair. David skimmed his hands up his stomach before slipping them into the opening of Hal’s shirt, palms covering over hot, smooth skin. The pad of his index finger grazed a nipple and Hal shuddered, pushing against him.

“Wanted to do that all night,” Snake said, worrying at the skin of the bite mark till it bloomed red and irritated. 

“I did too.” Hal’s fingers were tight in his hair, pleasantly burning. David wedged a knee between his legs and found him hard in his jeans. Jesus, he could feel his own pulse pounding in his cock. 

“God, Dave, please, I wanna fuck you so bad.” David remembered the last time in a place like this, the fantasy Hal had. And it was good and he wanted it too, wanted to feel Hal folded over him, covering him. He felt fucking frantic. “I wanna have you. Let me, please.”

“Yeah,” David said, practically out of breath. He shook when Hal pushed a palm against the join of his legs, grinding the heel of his hand against his cock. He bit his lip. “Okay. Yeah.”

If he’d been less desperate, less tipsy, maybe he would’ve gotten down on his knees, sucked him off first, but his head felt like it was bursting at the seams with cotton, too hazy with lust. He hastily unbuckled Hal’s belt and was struck with a pang of fondness at the same goofy-ass boxers Hal always fucking wore, starving at the sight of the growing wet spot over the crown of his dick. David spat in his fist, pulled Hal’s underwear down with one hand and took him in hand with the other.

“D-don’t do that too long or I’m gonna lose it,” Hal warned, knocking his forehead against David’s. His breath smelled like toothpaste and margaritas. David squeezed the base of his cock in his split-wet hand and Hal shuddered. “Do you have a condom?”

“No,” David looked at the dumpy little bathroom vending machine with a big homemade OUT OF ORDER sign taped to it. “Uh. Shit.” 

“I don’t have to put it in if you—”

“No, ‘sfine.” Now that the idea was in his head it was like he had to see it through or he’d fucking shatter into a million pieces. “Not like you’ve fucked anyone else lately.”

Hal shot him a look, but he knew he was right. The only people either of them were fucking these days were each other. “Please tell me you at least have lubricant.”

He did, by some stroke of luck, find a packet of KY in his wallet that he mostly used for stray bills and not much else. David was practically tearing it in half, squirting some into Hal’s palm like he was trying for the world record.

“Have you ever…?”

“Yeah,” Dave panted, as Hal pushed his other hand up under the back of David’s shirt. His nails were blunt but they scratched at the muscle of his back anyway, thrilling little lines of dull heat. “By myself. With other people.”

“Oh, god,” Hal groaned, and had to stop touching him to squeeze himself through his jeans to calm down. He could tell by the look on Hal’s face that the thought of David arched up with his fingers buried deep inside himself was threatening to blow his load right then and there. “When?”

“Lots of times. Got curious about it pretty young. Recently? Like a day ago.”

Hal hissed through his teeth, hauled him toward the sink, made him hold on to the lip of it. He tore down his own jeans, his underwear one-handed, lube slippery in his other palm. Hal coated his fingers in it, worked the rest over his aching cock. David leaned over the sink, watching Hal in the mirror overhanging it. Hal pressed his face into his neck. He traced a finger over his hole, other hand heavy on his ass, holding him open.

“What’d you think about.” The suicide question, like jumping headfirst into the fucking shallow end of a pool.

_“You,”_ David said, voice cutting off ragged and breathy at the end with Hal working one finger in, bucking up against him. “Oh my god, fuck me.”

He did. Maybe he hadn’t done this before with anyone else but he was suspiciously good at this, murmuring “relax” until David did, crooking a second finger in until he was pushing up against David’s prostate and making him gasp for air. He clenched around Hal’s fingers, white-knuckling the porcelain edge of the sink.

“Anyone could come in and see us, y’know,” Hal said, voice ragged. He twisted his wrist, sent sparks up the base of David’s spine.

“That didn’t, nngh, stop you last time,” David grunted. “I’m starting to think you like it like this.”

“Pot, kettle,” Hal conceded, then fucked in a third finger, making David bite his lip. He pumped his wrist slowly, dragging along inside him. His cock was neglected and painful, smearing precum on the underside of the sink basin. The muscles in his arms strained, pulled wire-tight. Hal’s breath was hot on the back of his neck, little beads of condensation on his flesh. “Jesus, Dave, you’re tight.”

David’s grip on the sink was so strong he feared he might actually shatter it, toes curling in his boots. Hal’s fingers were long and oddly graceful, building the pressure in him so expertly David felt tears pricking the corners of his eyes. He fumbled for Hal’s wrist, insistent.

“I’m gonna — fuck — Hal put your cock inside me right fucking now before I blow.”

Okay, maybe he could’ve been a little sexier about that but he was fucking gone at this point, drool collecting under his tongue, fucked half-stupid just by Hal’s fingers in him. Every time he panted out a breath he could feel the beginnings of a whine in his chest. His partner paused, fingers stilling, other hand winding around his front to give his dick a harsh squeeze at the base.

“Ffffuck,” David swore, only narrowly avoiding smacking his forehead on the faucet. “Oh my god, Hal, don’t make me beg.”

“No, I didn’t —” there was the sound of shuffling as Hal readjusted. He pulled his hands away and David nearly fucking growled, spreading his knees further, presenting. He heard Hal inhale hard through his nose, press a hand to one asscheek and spread him open to get a better look. “Holy shit, Dave, I didn’t know you were that into it. That’s really hot.”

What a picture he must make right now, with his jeans and underwear shucked down to his knees, pulled open and wanting. He felt residual lube leaking down the crack of his ass and bit his lip hard. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.” _Now please please please put your cock in me I’m dying here Hal._

“Okay,” Hal said, after a moment. “Okay, um. Here goes?”

It was maybe a bit of a silly thing to say, as if Hal was about to try jumping off a diving board for the first time, but any opportunity David had to laugh at him was utterly fucking annihilated by the cursory drag of Hal’s cock over his hole before he readjusted and pushed _in,_ thumb hooked into the rim. David made a sound like he’d just been punched in the gut, a heavy moan pulled out from deep inside his chest. He dropped his head, staring at the perfect silver of the sink drain, as Hal bottomed out, thin fingers bruising over his hips.

“Oh god,” Hal said, breathless. “Oh god, oh god. Dave, shit, you feel so —”

“Yeah,” David panted, because he knew the feeling, the tight heat, the slight resistance followed by the intoxicating give of his body around him. Like he was practically sucking Hal into him, pulling him tight so he was flush against him, long torso covering his back. He liked the pressure, the sensation of being filled up. He remembered the first time it ever happened, years ago, being fucked like this, the way his body lit up fucking electric. “C’mon, go, fuck me.”

Half of him expected Hal to break him, bruise him, use him however he liked. That was what David was used to, the bleed of violence. That was how it was with Fox and he liked it just fine. But Hal wasn’t Fox. He kept his face buried in David’s neck and started to fuck him, one hand firm on his hip and the over holding him across the belly, pulling him together, skin on skin pressure. Hal fucked him as slowly as he could manage, body practically vibrating with restraint, each snap of his hips drawing out little _unh, unh, unh_ sounds into Snake’s ear. 

He could tell that he liked it like this. Could tell because Hal was talking, talking, talking about how good it felt, how tight he was, how lucky he was getting. Like he couldn’t believe this was happening to him, that he got to do this. David felt the coil in his belly building, grunted with each drag of Hal’s cock, pressing back against him. Hal’s fist was tight in the hem of his shirt and David’s cock was dribbling precum, so hard the head was pushing back out of the foreskin with no assistance.

He felt insane. Hal pinned his prostate in one thrust and it took everything he had not to fucking scream.

“Faster,” David groaned, “You gotta — you gotta move faster, man, I need —”

“Yeah, fuck,” Hal swore, and bore down, fucking into him rougher. He’d have bruises from Hal’s hand on his hip. Good. David felt the edge of teeth on his neck and clenched his jaw, hissing when Hal stopped pussying around and sank his teeth in, as if to keep himself under control. He thought of the bite mark he’d have on his trapezius and shuddered. 

He let himself be fucked, half-collapsed against the sink, barely held up by his arms and shaky with need. David chanced a look in the mirror and saw a practical stranger, long hair pinned to his forehead by sweat, eyes hazy with lust, mouth half-open and panting. Hal still kept his face in his shoulder, overwhelmed, as he started to lose himself to the wet slap of skin on skin.

“Look at me,” David said, voice slurred. He could feel himself unwinding slow, like the coils of a lazy snake. “Look what you’re doing to me.”

Hal looked up then, chin pushed into Snake’s shoulder. Their eyes met in the mirror and Hal made a soft noise as if someone had just let all the air out of his lungs. He was red in the face, mouth wet with spit. His glasses were fogged with sweat and condensation and hanging half off his face. He looked fucking perfect.

_“Dave,”_ Hal said, voice practically rapturous. He wrapped a hand around David’s cock, finally taking mercy, and pumped him rough and slow, foreskin dragging deliciously over the crown before popping back. “Oh, shit. Look at you.”

That was all it took. He let himself go, spilling over Hal’s fist, catching a couple of drops on the edge of the basin. David sank against the lip of the sink, let himself be held up by Hal who was getting desperate, still watching him in the mirror as he started to lose rhythm, single-mindedly focused on grinding out a finish than reliably hitting his prostate.

“Dave — fuck I’m gonna — I’m gonna come —”

“Come in me,” David hissed, pushing back against Hal, encouraging him. Hal hit his prostate completely by accident and made him yelp, overstimulated but still needy. “C’mon, fill me up, baby, ruin me.”

Hal made a fucking wretched noise then, wrapping his arms around David’s waist and then just _hauling_ with all of his strength to force him upright, flush back to front as he spiralled out and came hard in him, swaying unsteadily together as his cock pulsed inside. David squeezed him through it greedily, twisting to kiss Hal on his chapped lips.

“Fuck,” Hal gasped, into David’s open mouth.

They leaned against each other till Hal was finished, fucked-out and exhausted and using the other for support. David could feel the very last of it starting to drip from him, pulled down by gravity.

“Starting to think we didn’t totally think this through,” David said, wincing.

“Whuh,” Hal said, snuffling against his shoulder. He was still holding him by the waist, like some kind of bizarre slow dance. His cock slipped out, a fat drop of cum following not too far behind. “Oh, shit. Oh my god. I’m so sorry.” 

Before David could say anything the door opened, freezing him in place. Stevie popped his red head in, surveying the scene with increasing levels of shock. Finally he landed on the two of them, not-so-subtly sizing up David’s spent dick.

“Uh, hi,” David said, because what the fuck else was he supposed to say in this kind of situation.

“God damn it,” Stevie said, still looking at his cock.

—

They washed themselves quickly, just enough to make the drive home bearable, and took the exit out the back of the bar, where no one would see them leaving. That kid who’d walked in on them had left his number signed with a _Nice dick, by the way <3_ on the table nearest the bathroom door, clearly not even a little phased by the sight of Dave with his pants around his ankles. Dave tore it up with a scoff, tossing the fragments in a dumpster they passed on the way to the car.

“Who even was that kid?”

“Just some college student shooting his shot,” Dave said, shrugging. “Wouldn’t leave me alone.”

“He looked like —”

“Meryl? Yeah. Thought so too.” Dave produced the keys to the van out of his pocket, jangling them in his hand. He spoke in a tone of voice that said _I don’t want to talk about that anymore._ “You mind driving us back?”

“Sure.” Hal felt strange, as if there was something missing here. He had the beginnings of hickeys blooming on his neck, an angry red now and probably purple tomorrow, a sure sign of _something._ Dave had never bitten him like that during sex before, and it wasn’t a _bad_ thing, but walking down the alley side-by-side as if nothing had just happened was rattling him. Dave walked with his hands in his pockets but Hal wanted to bump against him, hook his pinkie around Dave’s. Anything to hold on to what just happened.

He did not do that. Dave’s hands remained where they were. He thought of that kid, thought of Meryl, and something inside of him cringed away, fearful. Dave didn’t seem to notice the way that he fidgeted all the way to the car, overwhelmed with too many thoughts. He didn’t know what was wrong with him; he wished that he was in the bathroom again, too overcome with want to think about the ramifications of what they were doing, what it meant.

Hal climbed into the driver’s seat. He did not turn the key in the ignition, just sat there with his fingers gripping the steering wheel. It was warm and wet outside, and he could feel sweat gathering under his collar in the humid dark of the van. Dave regarded him with some confusion, shifting in his seat. He wondered if he was still tender from before, if the encounter felt fresh. There was the beginning of a bite mark peeking out from his shirt on the join of his shoulder and neck, where he’d held him against the sink, sank his teeth into the muscle there.

“I think we need to stop doing this.”

A beat passed. Dave’s eyes were dark under his fringe, long shadows cast under a lonely orange streetlight. “Okay.”

Okay? _Okay?_ He wanted to scream. He wanted to rip his shirt off and climb on top of the hood of the van and dance mad like the apocalypse was coming. He wanted for Dave to say anything other than just _Okay._ “I — you’re not gonna argue with me?”

A couple of months ago Hal would have run from this kind of conversation the way that he did not long after their encounter in the Big Shell. Now he felt himself pushing and pushing, grappling desperately for any sense of purchase on a man he felt was constantly slipping through his fingers.

“If you want to stop then we’ll stop.” Dave scratched at the stubble on his neck. There was nothing to be discerned from his tone of voice. Hal wanted anything out of him — anger, sadness, something. Instead he was carefully flat, like a sketch of a criminal, the very edges of a person. 

Hal wanted to argue. He wanted a reason not to do this. He was flashing semaphore to Dave on a dark, foggy night, and he was about to fucking crash.

“I just,” he was off anyway, prodding for a disagreement. He’d debate himself if he had to. “I think that...with the way Philanthropy is coming along, if we keep — having sex, we’re going to be introducing a shit ton of variables into the equation — and when I saw that kid tonight, I — well, when’s the last time you talked to Meryl?”

Dave was silent. There was a tightness to his jaw that Hal had eventually come to recognize as a sign he was upset. “What’s she got to do with any of this.”

“I mean — it’s no secret that when we all left Shadow Moses, you and she—”

Yeah, that did it. Dave sat upright in his seat, rigid as if waiting for something — someone — to attack him. Meryl was always a sore topic — they’d only spent about a week together before she was just _gone,_ as if she’d ceased to exist. “Jesus fucking Christ, Hal, spit it out already.”

_I think I want to be with you and it’s scaring me._

“—I’m afraid that Philanthropy is gonna fall apart. Is what I’m saying. That one day I’ll wake up and you’ll just be gone. That’s what happened with Meryl.”

_And if you do it to me I think you’d break my heart._

“Is that so,” Dave said, tongue curling slow around his response with so much venom. “Is that the kind of guy you think I am? That I’d just walk away from an obligation like—”

“Is that what you feel to me? _Obligated?”_ God, he fucking hated that word, like he had some kind of yoke around Dave. The kind he’d lived with all his life, the kind he’d slipped off from FOXHOUND and the government and Big Boss. “Dave, I want you to be here because you want to be. Sex complicates a working relationship. You walk away from the people you’re having sex with constantly, and Meryl—”

_“Meryl was a motherfucking_ child, _Hal,”_ Dave half-shouted, and pounded his fist on the dashboard, frustrated. Hal stared at him, in uneasy shock. “She was _eighteen,_ barely out of high school, and I only realized that when she was fucking telling me about how much she hated reading _Great Expectations_ for her English class after we’d slept together. I made her go because to her I was some kind of hero and I spent that night lying there realizing I was just a horny old scumbag she’d think back on and hate. I was wasting her god damn time.”

Hal picked at his cuticles, cowed. Rage was practically radiating off Dave but it was controlled, a quiet fire. He saw the way Dave’s hands shook with the effort. “I didn’t know that.”

“It’s fine. I didn’t expect you to. Just — if I wanted to I’d have left a long time ago. We’ve been in it four years,” Dave laughed bitterly. “Kinda gotta stick it out for the complimentary watch.”

Hal sighed, keying up the engine, trying to force the tension out of his shoulders. They’d effectively put a pin in the argument but it left him feeling sick to his gut. Dave scrubbed the back of his hand over his face, as if exhausted. Suddenly Hal felt like a fucking asshole, a feeling he figured was probably mutual.

“Mind if I put my seat back? I’m exhausted,” Dave said, but he was already adjusting it. Hal made a noise of distracted assent, cranking the gear shift into drive.

They spent the drive back to Miami in silence, Dave pretending to sleep the whole way. Hal found that he’d gotten used to the tells, the way he’d go unnaturally still, as if dead. When he really slept he tended to toss, mumbling softly. Hal didn’t know what to make of this realization. 

He turned on the radio to fill his head with anything other than the ugliness of his own thoughts. A classic rock station, old reliables that he could murmur the lyrics to as the highway stretched out orange and glowing under the streetlights before them. Freddy Mercury’s voice.

_When you’re feeling down and your resistance is low...light another cigarette and let yourself go…_

He thought of the taste of smoke on Dave’s tongue as he kissed him, the scrape of stubble on his cheek. The times he’d held him in that tiny motel bed after the Big Shell, how safe Dave felt even when Hal’s life was otherwise falling to pieces around him. Passing the bottle back and forth on the floor of the living room. Snake remembering his Thai order, turning a light on for him in an otherwise pitch-black room.

_Play the game, everybody play the game of love._

Was that love? Had he just ruined everything?

Hal cut the radio, and finished the rest of the drive in silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lyrics from queen's "play the game."

**Author's Note:**

> *claps hands together* well this was going to be a one-shot but with the way things hashed out i'm prrrrrobably going to be writing another chapter or two to this. this is my first metal gear fic so apologies if characterization is kinda weird, i'm still feeling these two out. a kudos is always appreciated!


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